


Bright after Dark

by behindthecurtain



Series: Sunshine [1]
Category: Southern Vampire Mysteries - Charlaine Harris, True Blood (TV)
Genre: F/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:55:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 39,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26059852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/behindthecurtain/pseuds/behindthecurtain
Summary: What if Bill was Sookie's introduction to vampires, but not the supernatural world as a whole?Retelling of the story with Sookie's powers turned way up and changed a bit.  Consolidating the books and the show, with some of my own material.  Starts Bill/Sookie, but will eventually be Sookie/Eric.
Relationships: Bill Compton/Sookie Stackhouse, Eric Northman/Sookie Stackhouse, Jason Stackhouse/Tara Thorton(one sided)
Series: Sunshine [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1891813
Comments: 8
Kudos: 38





	1. The Vampire

Sookie had been waiting for her vampire for years when he walked into the bar.

She knew she shouldn’t have been so eager. Not that it was just her. When the vampires had, as they laughingly put it, “come out of the coffin” (Lafayette had been so mad) everyone in Bon Temps had been eager in some way; to understand what they were, to meet one, to become one, or, her least favorite, to remove them from the world as if they were a plague. In her own eagerness, she had asked about them the next time she wandered into the woods and came across her favorite naiad.

“Vampires,” the old creek replied thoughtfully. They sounded bemused. “I haven’t met one in quite some time. You would do well to stay away,” they shimmered warningly. “They are dead things. One such as you should be wary of dead things.”

Sookie didn’t really understand what they’d meant by that, but she thought her questions might sound stupid, so she stayed quiet. Besides, it was unlikely that the stream had heard the experts who claimed that vampirism was just a virus that made people allergic to daylight and garlic. 

In any case, she was deeply curious. Curious enough that she might have been tempted to make the trek to New Orleans to seek a dead thing out had she the time, money, or the willingness to put up with population density. In any case, she didn’t really need to. She was sure that if she waited long enough one would cross her path eventually.

She was working the night shift at Merlotte’s when her vampire came in. Weekend evening shifts at a bar were good for tips, but bad for telepaths. She tried to keep herself focused on her work, but the noises were distracting and the thoughts were particularly loud and boisterous. They pressed on her shields, the ones she tried to concentrate on keeping air-tight as she took orders and delivered food, but on a night like tonight there was simply no way to keep everything out. 

She approached a table.

_ Just one beer tonight. That’s all. Jesus, give me the strength to say no to more… _

She put down the mug and moved on. She glanced at one of her tables as she breezed past to see if anyone needed a refill. 

_ He better not gripe about me eating fries, not after what I did for him last night… _

She was referring to anal. She found the whole thing repugnant and degrading and she resented her husband for convincing her to do it, but had also quite enjoyed the experience and was vividly recalling the best moment over and over again.

Sookie focused very hard on the weight of the tray on her arm. 

Her destination was a booth with two parents sitting across from their sullen teenage son. As was standard for teenagers, he wasn’t even bothering trying to curb his intense anger at them for some minor slight. It got in the way of his manners and he ignored Sookie as she approached and deftly distributed their plates from her tray.

_ I cannot wait to get the hell out of this podunk town. _

Sookie smiled sympathetically.

“Make sure you do before it’s too late. Every year you wait you just get more and more stuck here. Believe me, I know.”

She realized her mistake as all three patrons turned to stare up at her in surprise. Oops.

_ Shit, did I say that out loud? _

_ What’d I miss? _

_ Sookie Stackhouse might be crazy, but her tits are spectacular...  _

“I’ll get y’all some ketchup,” she said with an overly bright smile, and tried to make her bee-line for the kitchen look casual.

Sam, her boss, would probably have been concerned if he were watching Sookie. He wasn’t. He was busy throwing dirty looks at Arlene, a fellow waitress, who was on the phone with her kids. Tara, however, was bartending tonight and looked up sympathetically as Sookie worked her way to the back of the bar. Tara had seen worse from her telepathic best friend, but it had been a while and she was wondering if it was just particularly bad tonight or if something had happened. Sookie shot her what she thought was a reassuring grin (Tara knew her too well to be reassured) and slowed down just a bit. It wasn’t really worse than any other night like this. Weekend nights at Merlotte’s were always busy, the patrons always tipsy, and their thoughts always raucous. Maybe it was because she was distracted when she came into work, worrying about Gran’s health and thinking that her old car which needed to be jumped this morning might finally be on its last legs. Maybe it was because she hadn’t slept well last night. Maybe she was just having a bad day. The bar itself wasn’t the problem, she was just slightly off her game and it was enough to make her completely miserable.

Before she made it to the kitchen counter she noticed a new couple sitting in her section. She didn’t think they had been there long, but she should still get their drink order before running for the hills. As she approached the table she recognized her customers as the Rattrays, or the “Rats,” as she liked to think of them. Just perfect.

“What can I do for y’all tonight?” 

She saw the craziness of her smile reflected in Denise Rattray’s mind. Before she could tone it down, Mack Rattray looked her over like she was a thanksgiving turkey.

_ You can wrap your sweet lips around my slim reaper... _

“How about we start with - “

_ Then you can turn around... _

“...pitcher...”

_...while the table is rocking… _

“And you?” she smiled broadly at Denise. 

Denise took in her crazy-eyes with distaste. “Onion rings. With mustard.”  _ God, she looks like a dog that’s been kicked too many times.  _

“Coming right up!” Sookie wasn’t even trying to be cool and collected anymore. Did it matter if they thought she was nuts? Were they even wrong?

She practically ran to the back.

Lafayette was in the kitchen tonight. He was an old and dear friend, her best friend’s cousin, but it could be kind of hit or miss how comforting his presence was. At the moment his mind was muddled in a familiar way. Marijuana.

“Onion rings. And if you drop a few on the floor, that’s fine with me.”

He turned to her and smiled in a flirty way. Tonight was going to be a miss, then.

“Girl, you looking all Jessica Simpson with that tan and pink lipstick. You got a date?”

This was a joke. He was well aware that she never had dates.

“I get bigger tips when I wear makeup,” she explained in a deadpan. She thought she looked nice even without makeup, but people seemed to gloss over her face and pay attention to her less when she wasn’t presenting them with a specific look. “I also get bigger tips when I act like I don’t have a brain in my head.” Not that she had much control of that tonight. She lifted her hands and rubbed her temples.

She hoped that Lafayette would pick up on her despair. He didn’t. “Yes, girl, that is  _ it.  _ These damn rednecks are suckers for packaging.” 

“Because otherwise they’re all scared of me.”

Lafayette turned to her with a sleazy grin. “They ain’t scared of you, honey, they scared of what’s between your legs.”

Somehow this was just the cherry on top of her evening. And ‘scared’ wasn’t the word she would’ve used.

“Do you even know what’s between a woman’s legs, Lafayette?” Arlene had finished her call and was back to pick up the food for her tables. She seized on this easy distraction from work and motherhood. Dawn was coming over too.

“I know that every man, whether he is gay or straight or George fucking Bush is  _ terrified  _ of the pussy.”

“What the hell are we talking about?” Dawn picked up a tray. 

Sookie rubbed her temples harder and decided to go pick up her drink order from the bar. It felt rude to leave in the middle of a conversation, but her patience with crudeness was wearing particularly thin tonight. It was bad enough that she could hear every sexual thought within her general vicinity, but it somehow made it worse when those thoughts were spoken out loud. It was so much more embarrassing and uncomfortable. At least everyone knew her well enough to not expect her to be an active participant.

She fulfilled her waitressing obligations. She carried consumables, she bussed tables, she distributed checks and pocketed tips. Finally she got her fifteen and practically sprinted for the back door. She closed her eyes, took some deep breaths and concentrated on her own sensors. She felt with her own skin and smelt with her own nose and listened with her own ears. The relief was imperfect. Her own ears picked up amused and drunken shouting, even though she focused on the crickets; her own nose smelt the cigarette someone had smoked shortly before she came out, not the faint dampness of the nearby woods; and as she focused on the gentle caress of the breeze and the eager embrace of the moonlight, Dawn banged the back door open with a heavy trash bag to throw in the nearby dumpster. She gave Sookie a weird look (which she merely sensed since she refused to open her eyes) then turned to go back in.

_ Crazy, but I guess I get it. _

It was imperfect but it was enough. She checked the stability of her shields, which were well worn at this point. She tightened some metaphorical screws, tested them against the more distant thoughts and made the appropriate adjustments. When she walked back in she practically exuded calmness, even when Mack Rattray got handsy when she went over to refill his pitcher of Bud. 

Then she glanced up at her most recent customer and knocked ‘calm’ right out of her system. In a good way.

The greeter hadn’t noticed anything different about the vampire and led him to a small table (one of hers!) with the same enthusiasm that he had with everyone else that night, so when Sookie looked up she hadn’t expected to be floored. She could tell right away. He had an ethereal sort of glow, subtle but still distinctly other. No one turned to stare. Sookie wondered at the civility from the patrons of Merlotte’s, but after a quick peek beyond her shields to taste the aura of the room she realized that it all felt normal. No one’s thoughts were particularly agitated, or thoughtful, or in wonder. No one had noticed.

Sookie skipped to the bar and turned to Sam and Tara still bouncing. “I think Merlotte’s got its first vampire!”

_ The fuck?  _ Tara stood up straighter and narrowed her eyes, looking for the offending target. Sam looked over at her section curiously. 

“I think you’re right, cher,” he murmured. 

Sookie bounced a little in her excitement and ignored the wave of disapproval from Tara. Sam gave her a small smile.

She grabbed her tray and her pad and walked over as casually as she was able. He saw her approach and met her smile with a blank stare. He was around six foot, with thick dark hair which framed his angular face well. He was pale, obviously, but in an almost sickly way rather than simply having a lighter shade of skin. The other patrons barely seemed to notice him at all, but somehow in the chaos of the bar there was something about him that was wonderfully still.

She reached the table. “Hi,” she was practically bubbling out of her skin, “What can I get for you tonight?”

“Do you have any of that synthetic bottled blood?” His deep voice cooly washed over her, like a stream over smooth stones. She found it incredibly refreshing. Even more so than her fifteen minute break. 

Mack Rattray’s thoughts sparked in interest. He had heard.

“No, I’m so sorry! Sam’s got some on order. Should be in next week.” They had never had a vampire, and synthetic blood expired.

He nodded. 

“Are you able to drink anything else - I mean, is there anything else I can get you?” she corrected hastily and blushed furiously. His expression changed, just a smidge, and she wondered what it indicated. 

Which...wait…

“There’s nothing else I drink,” he replied before she could puzzle out what had confused her so much, “But you can bring me a glass of red wine so I’ll have a reason to be here.”

She laughed a little nervously, “Well, whatever the reason, I’m glad you are.” She was wearing a big goofy, but genuine, grin.

Somehow, he actually smiled back.

Mack Rattray cracked up and turned in his chair. The movement seemed particularly gawky in the presence of the vampire. “Don’t mind Sookie none, Mister. She’s as crazy as a bedbug.”

The vampire raised a brow. Even that seemed smooth.

“I’ll just get your wine for you…”

Her smile was far too broad now and she got a glimpse of what she looked like through Denise Rattray’s mind. She wondered if instead of getting his wine she should just crawl into a hole and die. She wondered if anyone else would get the joke.

In the time it took for her to get the wine from Tara and serve it to him the Rats had already migrated to his table. It was close enough to closing now that the bar was starting to die down and the lights were dimmed. Jane Bodehouse, as per usual, was far too drunk to drive herself home so Tara went off to call her son to pick her up. Sookie tried to discreetly watch the vampire. Denise Rattray was blatantly flirting with him: flipping her hair to show off her bare neck, trailing a light finger over her breasts, biting her lip. Sookie thought it was over the top but she was unfamiliar with these types of tactics. Besides, she couldn’t deny that it was working. The vampire was now sitting very close to her, unwilling or unable to take his eyes off of her neck. When she leaned forward to whisper in his ear his fangs slightly extended. Why Mack was alright with this she couldn’t say, though he was more than alright, in fact. He was watching the whole display with hooded eyes and he looked as hungry as the vampire. 

Sookie found it both repugnant and fascinating. Kinks had been foisted on her in the past, usually in abstractural passing thoughts, but since she had stopped dating long ago and had rarely ventured outside of her house except for work and chores (work being a sports bar in the middle of nowhere), she had never had the opportunity to watch such a gauche display. She felt hopelessly ill equipped for this type of thing, both her disgust and her bewildering interest. The novelty of it intrigued her, more than she thought it should, but only about half as much as the Rats disgusted her as people, as animals, and as vampire enthusiasts. Plus he had been  _ her  _ vampire.

Tara returned.

“What do you make of that?” she asked Tara, nodding to the scene.

Tara rolled her eyes, “Sookie, you’re pure but you’re not stupid.”

“Tara! I didn’t mean -” Sookie cut off her exclamation hurriedly and checked to make sure that no one was listening. The threesome was still going at it so she turned back. “You really think she’ll let him bite her?” she asked quietly.

“Oh yeah,” she nodded solemnly, “Don’t you know how many people are having sex with vampires these days?” Tara eyed the presumed-dead man in question suspiciously, “Sometimes those people disappear _. _ ”

Sookie scoffed, “Oh please.”

Tara rounded on Sookie, horrified by her dismissal. “Sookie, don’t you dare,” she hissed. Sookie looked away guiltily. She might have shared a few of her curious musings with Tara, whose mind was now racing with memories of times when Sookie got involved with magical creatures, accidentally or on purpose. Some were peaceful, like the spirits of the forest. Some were less peaceful, like the elves. Others were downright dangerous, like the goblin who had sworn a blood oath against Sookie when she was eleven. In Tara’s mind, vampires definitely fell into the last category, and Sookie defending one in any way was just flirting with disaster. “They literally drink the blood of the innocents to survive!”

“They used to,” Sookie corrected gently. “Now they have synthetic blood.”

“Synthetic-” Tara was building up to a tirade but Sam calmly stepped in.

“Would you pass up all your favorite foods and spend the rest of your life drinking SlimFast?” he asked quietly.

He wasn’t wrong, but Sookie felt attacked. “Did I miss something? Are you two vampire experts? Do you have a sordid history with creatures of the night that I know nothing about?”

Sam thought she was being extremely naive and found it endearing. 

Tara thought she was being extremely naive and found it infuriating. 

Sookie rolled her eyes. “I’m at the end of my shift. I’ll go wrap things up with them and head home.”

She could feel their eyes on her as she walked back to the Rats’ old table. She should’ve taken far more umbridge with Sam’s loftiness, the way he always seemed to think of her as a child, but the truth was she found it kind of nice. Comforting. Tonight had been overwhelming in a lot of ways, and sometimes it was nice to be babied a little by a kind friend. At least tonight it had all been contained in his head.

As for Tara, she was just concerned in an angry way. She knew Sookie better than anyone; they were each other's oldest and dearest friends, practically sisters, and Tara had always viewed herself as Sookie’s protector. From playground bullies to angry centars, Tara had always viewed herself as the person who stepped between Sookie and danger. And she knew Sookie well enough to know that sometimes that meant stopping Sookie before she got involved in something over her head. Sookie couldn’t really hold it against her. She had tried once or twice, but in the end Tara had been right. Sookie often couldn’t distinguish between what she saw and what other people saw, between supernatural and natural, between reality and fantasy. Even when it was fantasy, she couldn’t alway figure out if it was her own or if she was borrowing someone else’s imagination. It made her feel a little like she was floating between different realities, and Tara was the only one who had ever made the effort to understand. Tara was a pain sometimes, and she could be a little much, but she had nothing on Sookie and Sookie was deeply aware of how lucky she was to have Tara as a friend. 

Still, it wasn’t like Tara really knew any more about vampires than Sookie did. They were both deeply ignorant, the only real difference was that Tara wanted to stay that way. Sookie found it disappointingly small minded of her. Though maybe this was just one of those times when she was right, when getting involved with vampires was strictly speaking the wrong thing to do and Sookie was just distracted by their otherworldly pull. Maybe she was dismissing fact as bigotry. Maybe Sookie would never be able to sort it out either way. Maybe she should just let sleeping vampires lie.

_ One such as you should be wary of dead things. _

_ Careful, child, you’ll attract dead things like moths to a flame. _

Sookie shook her head and started to clear the Rats’ old table. She picked up their almost empty pitcher.

_...big guy, so he’s probably got eleven or twelve pints in him and holy shit that’s almost two hundred ounces… _

Sookie’s head snapped around. 

The Rats were drainers.


	2. The Silence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sookie saves Bill from the Rats.

Vampire blood, or V, had hit its stride as the drug of choice shortly after The Great Revelation. Sookie stayed away from drugs and didn’t know too much about it, but she knew that it was still pretty popular from the brains buzzing in Merlotte’s. In theory it had anti-aging properties, healing properties, libido increasing properties, and at least one famous actor had sworn that it made the taker younger. The jury of the court of public opinion was still out, however, because the results were wildly unpredictable. Experts warned that poor reactions were vastly underreported and that negative effects were severe. People mostly didn’t listen to experts give negative opinions when they could help it, though, at least not with miracle performance enhancing drugs. A few years ago, Sookie had watched an in-depth news piece on drainers - the dealers who got the V. They would trap the vampire somehow and bleed them completely dry. This didn’t always kill the vampire in itself, but the vampires were usually killed thereafter by stake or being left out in the sunlight. If the vampire didn’t die, the drainer was certain to later. 

Sookie slammed the almost empty pitcher on the table and splashed herself in the process.

“Is there anything else I can get y’all?” Her voice sounded squeaky.

Mack gave her a steely grin.  _ Get the fuck out of here.  _ “Just the check.”

“How about you Denise?” 

Denise barely glanced in her direction before shaking her head.  _...can finally pay off all those credit cards… _

“And you?” Sookie turned to the vampire. 

He looked bored.

“No, thank you, that will be all.”

“Are you sure?” She gave him her wildest, craziest eyes. She looked pointedly at Mack, then Denise, then back at the vampire.

_ The hell is her problem? _

_...bet in Dallas we could get.. _

The vampire seemed confused for a second. Then he smirked a little and sat back. “I’m sure.”

“Alrighty then, just let me go get that check and I’ll be back in a New York minute.”

As soon as she was out of sight she grabbed Tara roughly by the arm.  _ Bitch, that hurts! _

“The Rattrays are going to drain the vampire,” she whispered urgently.

_ So?  _ Tara blinked at Sookie and then got it. “No,” she said flatly.

“Tara!”

“If that vampire is stupid enough to go anywhere alone with the Ratrays he probably deserves it,” she said with an eye roll. “Besides, he can take care of himself.”

“How do you know?”

She didn’t really, as far as Sookie could tell. Most of what she ‘knew’ was stuff she had picked up from around town or social media or fictional books and TV shows. Even so, she was resolute.

“Fine then,” Sookie snapped, not waiting for an answer.

“Sook!” 

Sookie turned back towards the table and only then realized it was empty. “Phooey,” she cursed. Luckily Arlene was between her and the door. “Hey, do my closing work and I’ll do it for you the next two times,” she said quickly as she ran past her. She didn’t stay to make sure Arlene understood.

She ran outside. She could feel the tug of the moon, but even without it and with her shields up, she could feel the tickle of the Rats’ minds. They were just beyond the end of the driveway, hiding in the trees. Sookie only paused briefly as she passed Sam’s pickup truck to borrow his chain.

_...thick as molasses… _

_...shitshitshitshit…. _

They were distracted enough to not hear her footsteps or the heavy clanking of her chain but she still slowed. If they heard her getting close they might panic and stake the vampire before the deed was done. When she got behind the nearest truck she paused just long enough to get her bearings.

_ If he freaks out on me again… _

_ We should have taken him home. _

With a shuddering breath, Sookie lowered her shields.

She was stunned for a moment by the intensity with which the adrenaline fueled unshielded thoughts hit her. She had the instinctive urge to hold her head and cover her ears as she did when she was a child. She didn’t. Instead she forced herself to ignore the mental shouting in the forefront and find the undercurrent buzz of their collective subconsciousness. It had been a long time, years even, since she had done this. Her shields were the only psychic ability she had cause to practice in her adult life. No matter, she had done this before, and she would relearn it, even if these weren’t ideal circumstances. She couldn’t distinguish between Mack or Denise or the vampire, it was more like she was stepping into a lukewarm pool of general lessons learned, instincts, knowledge bases and motor skills. It threatened to overwhelm her. 

_ Halfway there now. _

Right, she had no time.

The vampire's head shot up when she moved from behind a car. He was on his back writhing in pain and gasping with his mouth open and his fangs fully extended, but useless because he couldn’t move. The veins in his arms were extremely prominent as his body worked to replace the blood being stolen by the Rats and their needles. He was being held down by a long, thin silver chain which draped over his neck, wrists, ankles and abdomen. She could smell flesh burning where it made contact.

Well, her chain was bigger.

In one movement she dropped the chain from her arm, swung back, stumbled from the weight of the chain, and swung at the middle of Mack's back. He grunted in pain and fell to his knees. Denise looked up from her work then turned back to connecting a tube to an empty bladder. Evidently this wasn't the type of thing you stopped in the middle of, even if you were attacked. 

“You crazy bitch,” Mack spat as he recovered. Sookie glimpsed the knife in his mind a moment before it was brandished. She hadn't had much practice with this type of thing (fighting, advanced telekinesis, using her advanced telekinesis in a fight), but she foresaw the swipe at her arm and managed to sidestep it right on time. He cursed and readied himself to tackle her. She preempted by swinging the chain back and propelling it forward. It wanted to go slack on his shoulder - she was too weak to give the heavy chain enough momentum - but instead she pulled it with her mind. She wrapped it around his neck securely and continued to squeeze. He choked and dropped the knife as he again fell to his knees.

That got Denise’s attention. She lunged for the knife but Sookie beat her to it. She held the knife steadily, as if she had any idea what to do with it. She couldn’t know if it was her own surety or if she was borrowing from someone else.

Denise was livid, but she wisely eyed the blade between them instead of indulging in her desire to tackle Sooke to the ground and beat her to a pulp. She was wary of the armed young woman, but also incredulous that Sookie Stackhouse of all people was a threat.

“This is none of your business, you stupid cunt.”

“Now, see, that just proves how low-rent you really are,” Sookie said cooly. Mack was clawing at the chain around his throat.

“Do you have any idea who you are messing with? You do not want to be on my bad side.” 

“I’m not sure you even have another side, you cheap Christmas trash.” 

It finally occurred to the gasping man that he could unwind the chain. He coughed and sputtered and fueled his desire to retaliate with his rage.

Denise moved to recover the Vacutainers from beside the vampire. Sookie jabbed the knife at her.

“Uh-uh. That doesn’t belong to you.”

Denise was practically shaking. “I will kill you for this.”

“Get. Out. Now.” Denise seethed until she realized that Mack had gotten back to his feet. Mack’s body was working almost completely on instinct, which is why Sookie only sensed his intention a moment before she felt the energy of the chain he swung back at her.

If Sookie had been firmly in her own mind, she would’ve thought better than to make such a spectacle of herself. But she wasn’t, so instead she turned enough to allow the chain to wrap itself around her forearm as gently as a silk scarf. Then she tugged in one strong burst that would not have pulled Mack at the other end had he not still been gasping for air and had she not been mentally kicking him from behind. As if in slow motion, she watched him stumble forward and aimed her well placed kick at his head. 

Denise cursed. Sookie stepped back to give her the room to approach and brutally yank Mack back to standing.

“This ain’t over,” she snarled, but she conceded temporary defeat and dragged Mack away. She berated him all the way to their car.

Sookie decided it was over and withdrew back into the cocoon of her shields again. She felt completely drained, but as she approached the wounded vampire she heard the roar of an engine and realized that the Rattrays had another weapon. 

She moved faster than she ever had before and got behind the vampire’s head. “Push with your feet,” she panted as she pulled him under his arms. He made a painful noise as he scurried back and the car just missed them by a yard before the driver had to turn to avoid a tree. Sookie watched as the car turned too fast for the curve out of the driveway and skidded away. The motor became more quiet with distance.

“Wow,” she breathed. She collapsed to her knees in exhaustion. Her legs felt as shaky as a newborn fawn. 

Then she turned to the vampire and got a look at him. “Phooey,” she spat vehemently, her choice word for the night. The tube was still connected. She used the knife to make short work of the leather tourniquet at his arm, then she quickly rolled up his long sleeve shirt and applied pressure to the site of the wound before sliding out the needle. With that accomplished she took the opportunity to examine his person.

“Oh you poor thing,” she sighed. The smell of burning flesh was stronger now. The silver chain had sunk into his skin and hadn’t moved with him very much when he got out of the way of the car. It had skinned him and was now burning into the muscle beneath. She was no doctor, but it seemed more important than applying pressure to his arm.

“I’m sorry I didn’t get here faster,” she murmured as she got to work on the chain. He looked up at her sharply. The chain smoked and though she tried to be gentle in removing it, some tissue stuck anyway. She gently extracted it at a moderate speed. Ripping them up quickly seemed cruel, but going too slowly would surely just prolong his pain. He remained silent throughout.

When no part of the chain was touching him she turned to look into his face. “You’ll feel better in a minute, right? Do you want me to leave?” 

He calmly shook his head and a warm bubbly feeling blossomed in her stomach, until he added “They might come back, and I can’t fight yet.” His cool voice sounded unsure, but it was no doubt honest.

And what was she supposed to do about that exactly? She made a sour face at him and turned away. She knew how unpleasant it could be to be stared at while you're hurting. Instead she turned her back at him and stared at the parking lot. A couple left the bar and got into their cars, but no one noticed her silent vigil while the vampire healed behind her. The moon reached through the trees and soothed her mind like it was massaging sore muscles.

She could sense the movement when he sat up.

She turned to look at him. He was gazing intently at her face. The wounds on his exposed skin already looked days old and the tissue knit together as she watched.

Sookie reminded herself not to stare. Instead she rose and offered him her hand, but he recoiled sharply.

She frowned.

“I reckon you’re not too happy about being rescued by a woman.”

He didn’t deny it, nor did he look particularly apologetic.

“Thank you,” he muttered stiffly.

She rolled her eyes, waiting for the painfully chauvinistic thought that would ruin any good will she felt for him and all vampires everywhere.

It didn’t come.

Maybe her brief escapade had strengthened her shield, though that wasn’t how it had worked in the past. Maybe she had retreated into her cocoon a little too snuggly after the whole ordeal.

But...no, she could still feel the atonal thrumming of Merlotte's in the background. 

She closed her eyes and did something awful. Truly terrible. Her Gran would be appalled to hear about it (if they ever openly discussed her quirk). She nudged through her shields, just a smidge, and listened into his mind.

“ _ I can’t hear you, _ ” she rounded on him in shock.

“Thank you,” he repeated loudly and impatiently.

“N-no! I heard that...but...” her body moved on its own before she made a decision. She leaned in front of him and put her hands on either side of his head. She gazed deeply into his now wide and bewildered eyes and...nothing. Well not nothing exactly. His mind took up space where his thoughts should be, but it was a void of white noise. While they were touching like this, she could actually delve into it, surround herself with it like a safety blanket.

She laughed out loud then clamped a hand over her mouth. “Excuse me,” she giggled, but she couldn’t make herself really feel it. She couldn’t even find it within herself to feel embarrassed for her overly intimate actions (she had  _ touched  _ someone and it hadn’t been horrible!) She retreated a few safe yards away and had to remind herself not to prance. She filled the silence (oh it was  _ so silent _ ) by providing a highly edited account of how she knew that the Rats were up to no good. She tried, she really did, to remind herself that he was a vampire, a stranger,  _ a man,  _ and she was in a dangerous position, but it didn’t calm her down. She had never ridden this high and it seemed there was no coming down.

Though he did his darndest to bring her down himself.

“...so I figured I better come out here to see how you were,” she concluded.

“You came out here to rescue me. It was brave.” His voice was seductive, not so much a cool river on stone anymore but velvett and chocolate and fire all wrapped into one. But it was also wrong, like two voices were speaking at once and she shivered with a deeply unpleasant feeling akin to someone trailing a finger over her brain matter.

“Now you cut that out,” she said abruptly. She couldn’t quite explain why she felt so indignant, but she was eager to get back on regular footing. His eyes widened infinitesimally for a second, then returned to neutral.

“Aren’t you afraid to be alone with a hungry vampire?” Little changed in his demeanor, yet there was something dangerous even beyond his words.

She thought about it. “No.” 

“Are you assuming that since you came to my rescue I won’t hurt you? That I harbour an ounce of sentimentality after all these years?” He cocked an eyebrow. “Vampires often turn on those who trust them. We don’t have human values.”

“Humans don’t always have human values,” she grumbled, “But I’m not a total fool.” She removed the silver chain from her pocket and wrapped it around her throat. He probably could have beaten her to it and knocked it out of her hand, but for whatever reason he didn’t. 

“You have other, very juicy arteries.” His eyes trailed down her body. “There’s one in the groin that’s a particular favorite of mine.” There was that finger on her brain again.

“Uh-uh,” she snapped, curling the silver chain around her hand, “I won’t listen to nasty talk. When you talk to me you will talk to me like the lady that I am.”

The vampire blinked blankly.

“Would you like to drink the blood they collected?” he asked unexpectedly.

_ Ew.  _ “No.”

“I understand it makes humans feel healthier and improves their sex life.”

“I’m healthy as a horse.” And the last thing her life of celibacy needed was a libedo boost. “You do what you want with it.”

“You could always sell it,” he said with his eyes intently on her face.

She glared at him. “I wouldn’t touch it.”

He was in front of her then. She could barely make out the movement with her eyes but her fifth sense lit up like the fourth of July. 

“You’re different,” he said, his eyes boring into hers intensely, “What are you?”

She was surprised by the change. She realized that she would normally know what to do or say based on what people expected of her, which she couldn’t judge from this silent, stoic man. Was this a normal conversation? Was she in danger?

Her nervousness broke through in her voice. “Well, I’m Sookie Stackhouse, and I’m a waitress. What’s your name?”

He gazed into her eyes for a moment more before answering, “Bill.”

She cracked up.

“Bill? Seriously?” she snorted. He didn’t look thrilled. “I thought it might be Antoine, or Basil, or Langford, maybe, but Bill? The vampire Bill!” She couldn’t stop giggling. He was, of course, completely still.

She eventually rose to her feet. She wasn’t sure how long she had been gone for, but Sam was probably waiting for her to get her stuff before locking up. 

“I’ve got to get going. See ya around vampire Bill.” She smiled at him warmly, sure that this would be the last they saw of each other, before making her way back to Merlotte’s.

Sam and Tara were still there. Sam wasn’t quite done prepping for tomorrow and Tara was fuming on a bar stool. 

“What did you do?” she demanded. Sookie saw herself through Tara’s eyes. She looked a little worse for wear, but Tara was most agitated by the dreamy look in her eyes. “Did he hypnotise you?” Tara’s voice cracked with concern.  _ Oh god, they love virgins...did he- _

Sookie held her hands up. “I’m fine, he didn’t hypnotise me, and for your information not all vampires can take care of themselves.”

Tara wasn’t convinced.  _ He could have hypnotised you into saying that _ .

Sookie rolled her eyes. “Look, come by tomorrow for breakfast and I’ll explain, just…” At a loss for words Sookie threw her arms around Tara. Tara froze. Sookie never touched people when she could get away with it, and with her shields frayed from a long night it was even more intense than it normally would have been. She could barely distinguish between her feet and Tara’s; her bliss and Tara’s horror; who was holding and who was being held. But the physical connection was needed after something this eventful and after a moment she stepped back, a little dizzy, but back to being herself. Tara was stunned. What just happened?

Tara glared at her. “You’re going straight home?”

Sookie nodded.

“You promise.”

Sookie nodded.

“Then you better be prepared for tomorrow, bitch.”  



	3. Families

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Stackhouses have lunch.

Tara was pretty sure that if something happened with the vampire it would be her own damn fault. 

In her defense, she had been working when Sookie grabbed her arm last night. When Sookie let go she figured she had time to get an unopened bottle of whisky from the store room, and when she returned her last customer ordered a final beer, so she went ahead and filled a stein. She figured Sookie was in back somewhere, until she looked up and saw Arlene cleaning Sookie’s table.

_ Aw hell. _

She had thought Sookie was too old for this shit. It had been some time, anyway, since Sookie stepped up to play hero to some otherworldly thing she had no business trying to help. Tara started to move from behind the bar, thinking that at the very least  _ she  _ was getting too old to be babysitting a twenty-five year old head-case when the door opened and Jason Stackhouse walked through.

Sookie and Jason were two sides of the same coin. Sookie was the epitome of the Bon Temps ideal of femininity. She had long blond hair, bright green eyes, curves and ample breasts usually tucked into girly clothing. She had a bright, loving, warm personality, but people generally kept their distance. The citizens of Bon Temps had known her all her life as that crazy girl who didn’t know how to talk to people and always seemed to know more that she should - some had even formulated theories as to what she was and how to avoid her powers - but even out-of-towners could just tell that she was other in some way and instinctively shied away. Sookie once admitted that she was worried about Tara’s reputation in associating with her. Tara told her to fuck off with that nonsense. She didn’t need the approval of these redneck bigots anyway. 

Jason, was almost the complete opposite. If Sookie was the embodiment of femininity, Jason was all man. His tank top showed off his bulging muscles and his hands, rough from a day of work, were raised in greeting to his friends at the pool table. He had been the captain of the football team in high school, and still seemed to command the same presence in his adulthood. He wasn’t just popular. People seemed to orbit around him and love him just for being his stupid, goofy, selfish self. It was effortless on his part. People usually liked him, loved him, or vehemently hated him (such as Andy Bellefleur), no one seemed to think he was just alright or took his existence for granted. He barely had to beckon with a single finger to get a woman to come to his side. It made Tara furious. He was wasting women who didn’t really know him or care to. Women who just wanted to be under him instead of wanting to be with him. Tara knew the real him. The wonderful person underneath the adonis exterior who was capable of being just as kind and loving as his sister.

Jason didn’t look at Tara as he sat down.

“Hey Sam. My sister here?”

Sam frowned while pouring Jason his usual mug of beer. “No sorry, she just left.” Sam shot a suspicious look at Tara who glared at him for stealing Jason’s attention. Actually, wasn’t something going on with Sookie? Right, she was going after the Rattrays because they were draining a vampire.

_ Eh, she’ll probably be fine. _

“Hi Jason,” she said sweetly. 

He zoned out, staring at his hands with a troubled frown.

_ “Jason,”  _ she said more harshly. His eyes snapped to hers. “Hi,” she smiled.

“Hey,” he went back to staring at his hands.

Tara scowled. “What, am I not worth even looking at? Saying hello to? Do you only remember your manners when we run into each other at your Gran’s place? Or did you just forget your sister’s best friend who spent the night at your house for, like, years?” She was being too harsh, but it had been a while since they had seen each other one-on-one like this (Sam and the rest of the bar didn’t count), and he wouldn’t even glance in her general direction. 

Jason looked up at her with confused puppy eyes. “Yeah, I remember you, Tara.”

“Uh, you  _ better  _ remember me.” She felt warm all over when he said her name. 

“Hey stranger,” a flirty voice said from further back.

Jason turned his back to Tara and even that seemed more animated when he saw  _ her.  _ “Dawn!”

He lept over to hug her and she hugged him back tightly. Tara wanted to gag. She looked away, and saw her cousin, Lafayette, lazily eyeing her while leaning on the bar. He was sipping from a coffee mug which she suspected contained her freshly opened whisky.

“Smooth, hooker,” he said with a smirk.

She glared at him. “Don’t you have something to fry?”

He leaned forward, “The kitchen is closed, but even if we were packed I wouldn’t miss you making this much of a fool of yourself for the world.” Tara threw her cleaning rag at him.

Jason came back to the bar. 

Tara smiled again.

“Great seeing you Tara. Good luck. Oh, hey Lafayette,” he said with a smile at the man in question. He didn’t glance Tara’s way again as he slapped a bill onto the bar, his beer mostly untouched and took off after Dawn who was leaving.

“Good luck? Good luck with what?” Tara called after him indignantly.

Lafayette snickered into his mug.

“Shut it, you ugly bitch.”

“What even was that?” Lafayette took a sip and realized. “Aw, you still holding onto that torch?”

“Of course not,” she snapped. She was. “That boy is too damn stuck up for his own good.” If he weren’t maybe he would realize that he needed a real woman. Maybe he would realize that the real woman he needed had been in front of him all along. 

“Girl, that boy is sex on a stick no matter how stuck up he is.”

Tara’s final customer who was paying his check gave Lafayette an odd look. Lafayette winked back.

Tara found her rag on the floor and wiped the bar with it (the germs didn’t matter if no one saw). She flipped Lafayette off when he left. She felt humiliated. She had made a fool of herself to Jason and her stupid cousin had witnessed the whole scene. In her pit of self loathing it took a minute for her to come out of the fog that Jason always put her in. She was just getting ready to go when she remembered, with a sudden bolt of clarity, that Sookie was doing something Sookie-like.

_ Shitshitshitshit… _

There was nothing to do. She ran outside, but Sookie was long gone.  _ SOOKIE, GET BACK HERE!  _ She thought as loudly as she could. There was no response, and Sookie didn’t just appear from behind a nearby tree. Shouting seemed like it could go very badly, and if she searched she wouldn’t be here if Sookie came looking for help.

Resigned, she turned back to the bar to wait. Sam gave her an odd look when she sat on a stool. “Go away Sam,” she glared at him. Sam, her boss, eyed her flatly before he turned to continue his closing work.

That was yesterday. Today she got answers.

She turned into Adele Stackhouse’s extremely bumpy driveway by lunchtime. The Stackhouse house was in the middle of quite a bit of land and was over a century old, but still standing strong. It desperately needed some housework that neither Sookie nor Adele could afford, not to mention a fresh coat of paint and a newly paved driveway, but Tara had always loved coming to this old house. Jason and Sookie had practically been raised here and Tara had found every opportunity to visit growing up. Sookie and Jason had lost their parents when they were young, and Adele, their paternal grandmother, had taken them in without question. Jason moved out as soon as he turned eighteen, but Sookie still lived here with her ‘Gran.’ She joked once that Tara shouldn’t have the sole responsibility of looking after her, but Tara knew that Sookie was much more worried about Adele than Adele was about Sookie. Sookie’s abilities only messed with her ability to socialize, not her functionality. She was perfectly capable of living an independent life in an apartment closer to town, even if the nearby minds might drive her up the wall. Adele, on the other hand, was living off of social security and had some debt left over from expenses taken on from raising her grandchildren. Tara knew that she would never accept any financial help from the younger Stackhouses, so Sookie living with Adele allowed her to do things like buy groceries for the house and contribute to the phone bill without the elder feeling like she was accepting charity from her family.

Sookie was in a bikini in a lawn chair sunbathing, but as soon as she heard or sensed Tara she looked up with a warm smile. 

Tara came to an abrupt stop. “Start talking.”

“Hello to you too.” Sookie was in a very good mood today. “I’m often in a good mood,” she responded pleasantly. She was trying to act cool but she was clearly bursting at the seams to tell Tara something.

“What did he do to you,” Tara asked directly. She was trying to remember that horror movie she had watched as a kid. Trying to remember how it was the heroes had staked the vampire, or dropped her coffin into the ocean or something. She was pretty sure it had been over a locket in the movie. Whatever.

Sookie shook her head, ignoring that thought, and looked at Tara with the brightest of bright eyes. “Tara, listen-”

But before she got to say her piece a familiar pickup came roaring into the driveway with Jason behind the wheel. They waited as he came to a halt, put the car in park, then came storming out straight for Sookie. He approached Sookie in much the same way Tara had. He ended up right next to Tara, she realized with a flutter.

“Hey Jason,” she smiled.

He only had eyes for Sookie, though, and Tara resented that.

“Why didn’t you tell me you beat up the Rattrays last night?” he demanded.

Tara rolled her eyes. Of course that’s what Sookie did. “Probably because she didn’t want you to know that she did it for a vampire.”

Jason jumped up at that, startled. His head whipped back and forth between the two of them. Tara wasn’t sure what she was more pleased by, Jason’s reaction or Jason’s attention.

“Oh, shut it Tara,” Sookie scowled. “I haven’t even seen you since then,” she sneered at Jason, “And you know I was fine,” she gave Tara a look. “And keep your voice down, I don’t want Gran hearing about any of this.”

“Like hell-” Tara began.

“How do you even know?” Sookie interrupted Tara to ask Jason.

“Hoyt couldn’t wait to tell me.” Hoyt Fortenberry was Jason’s oldest and best friend.

“How does Hoyt know?” 

“He went over to the Ratts last night to buy some weed, and Denise drove up like she wanted to kill somebody she was so mad. It took both Hoyt and Denise to get Mack into the trailer, and then they had to take him to the hospital in Monroe.”

“The hospital, Sook?” Tara asked in alarm. Was the vampire responsible, or Sookie? Sookie was capable of it, but she hadn’t accidentally put someone in the hospital since they were teenagers.

“It wasn’t an accident,” she snapped at Tara.

“What?” Jason asked.

“And did Hoyt tell you that Mack came after me with a knife?”

“What?” he asked again, this time with intentionality. “Son of a bitch, do you want me to kick his ass for you?”

“I already took care of that, thank you,” Sookie replied coolly.

Jason, somehow, seemed to accept that, but Tara knew better. 

“Why were you messing with Mack Rattray anyway?” 

Tara sighed. She left the siblings and went into the house. Sookie was giving Jason a version of the account that Tara suspected was highly edited. She didn’t need to hear about the Rattrays and their vampire draining business. She didn’t need to hear what Sookie did to them, she had seen Sookie in a fight. She needed to hear about the vampire, which Sookie was not going to go into detail about until her brother left. 

Instead she wandered into the kitchen and found Adele Stackhouse over the stove making steak. Her smile was just as warm as Sookie’s had been when she approached. Adele was in her seventies with a kind, round face, long grey hair, and blue eyes that probably shone just as brightly as they had when she was young. She had almost as much of a hand in Tara’s upbringing as Tara’s own mother, and Tara could only wish that it had been more. 

“Tara! Sookie mentioned you would be stopping by.”

“Hey, Mrs. Stackhouse,” Tara smiled and moved towards the coffee maker.

Adele shooed her away. “You sit down, I’ll make a new pot.”

They chatted a bit as Adele worked her way around the kitchen. How was work? It was going just fine. Sam treating you well? Well, he hadn’t given Tara a reason to kill him as of yet.

“Oh, Sookie mentioned a vampire came to Merlotte’s last night,” Adele mentioned as if she had almost forgotten a juicy bit of gossip.

Tara resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “Yes, Ma’am. I was there.”

“What did you think of him?”

“I didn’t get the chance to speak to him, myself.”

“Sookie said he was handsome.”

“Did she now?” That was a little unusual for Sookie to notice, but not completely out of left field. It didn’t really matter anyway.

“What do you think?”

“I thought he looked dead.”

Adele shot her a stern look over her shoulder. “Tara Thorton, I won’t accept any kind of bigotry in my house, you hear?”

“Yes Ma’am.” She tried to make it sound like she meant it. Adele Stackhouse was almost as bad as Sookie. Sometimes Tara wondered what would happen if she knew that her granddaughter was a magnet for all things magical in Northern Louisiana. She wasn’t ignorant to just  _ how  _ special Sookie was and she didn’t avoid the topic like the plague the way Jason did, but Sookie seemed to feel uncomfortable bringing it up with her grandmother. Tara wondered if she had any inkling of the dangerous situations Sookie had found herself in over the years. She wondered if she knew that Sookie had invited some of that danger herself by getting involved whenever an opportunity to help someone had presented itself. She wondered if it would have changed how she felt about the vampire.

Jason walked into the room. Also Sookie. Actually Sookie had probably come in first. 

“Jason?” Adele clearly hadn’t known her grandson would be coming by, but she was so thrilled she turned away from the stove. “Boy, where have you been keeping yourself?” Tara suspected that she visited more than Jason did. 

“Hey, Gran! How’s my girl?” They hugged each other tightly. 

“You’re all sweaty,” Adele said happily, “Want some iced tea?”

“I would love some!” 

Jason sat at the table. Tara shifted towards him just a bit. She couldn’t help herself. Sometimes it was like she lost all control of her motor functions. She could feel it happening again, like an out of body experience. She knew, before she opened her mouth, that she would greet him again. It made no sense, they had already seen each other, she would be making a fool of herself yet again, but regardless she took a breath and the words formed on her lips.

“Hey, J-”

Sookie ran into her chair and kicked her hard. “Oh, I’m so sorry Tara,” she said with wide, innocent eyes.

“You better be sorry,” she said with a scowl, but she knew that Sookie would sense her relief.

Lunch was enjoyable, as it usually was with the Stackhouses. The food was good. The siblings teased each other. Adele was clearly pleased as punch to have the three of them under her roof at the same time. It felt so normal and family-like that Tara’s chest ached. 

At one point Adele and Sookie left the room for a moment, Sookie throwing a concerned glance over her shoulder at Tara. In their adulthood, Sookie had become much more careful about leaving Tara and Jason alone together, for some reason. 

Jason turned to Tara. “Sookie said that I should be nicer to you,” he said quietly.

Tara smiled brilliantly. Jason was speaking to her! “You’re just fine,” she said gently. Sookie should mind her own business, besides there was no need for him to apologize. 

He didn’t. “Oh good,” he said with a goofy grin, and stole some of Sookie’s food. It was fine. Just like he was fine. Everything was fine.

Sookie hurried back, and frowned when she saw her plate.

“I thought you might want to start watching your weight if you keep wearing outfits like that.” He was so brazen that Sookie and Tara had to laugh. 

Sookie gasped and her head snapped up. She looked towards the living room in astonishment. Tara and Jason exchanged a confused glance.

“Sook?” Jason asked quietly.

A moment later. Adele walked into the room with a concerned look. “That was just Everlee Mason on the phone. Maudette Perkins was found strangled to death in her apartment!”

Everyone looked stunned.

“Well shit,” Jason sat back.

Adele didn’t even scorn him for his language. “She didn’t show up for work and wasn’t answering her phone,” she continued with a sad frown, “Her boss called Bud Dearborne, and he rode over and got the manager to let him in, and they found her. They say she was strangled.”

“Poor Maudette,” Sookie said sadly.

“We graduated from high school with her,” Tara added.

“Can you believe it, a murder in Bon Temps,” Adele shook her head.

“Well why are you surprised,” Jason said irritably, “Now that we got ourselves a vampire.”

Tara nodded.

Sookie rounded on him, “Wasn’t she strangled? Just because he’s a vampire doesn’t mean-”

“Oh come on,” Jason argued back, “Fangbangers go missing all the time in the cities.”

“Fang...banger?” Adele said uncertainty, like she understood the words but not when put together.

“A vampire groupie,” Tara explained. “People who follow around vampires because…” She felt weird having this conversation with her best friend’s grandmother.

“Because…?” Adele asked.

“They like to get bitten, I guess,” Sookie shrugged.

“Ah,” Adele Stackhouse nodded thoughtfully. Sookie winced and Tara was glad for the millionth time that she couldn’t hear her relative’s thoughts.

“How do you know Maudette was a fangbanger,” Tara turned to Jason with an accusatory frown.

He shrugged, “I saw the bites last time we...last time we spent time together.”

Tara had a choice response to that, but Sookie kicked her again.

“I hope you’re not brought in for questioning,” Sookie said darkly, perhaps to cover her actions.

Jason looked startled. “Why would I be?”

“Because you ‘see her’ occasionally. And because Andy Bellefleure has it out for you.” Andy, one of the few officers in their small town, just had a stick up his butt because he was jealous of Jason’s...everything, but Sookie was probably right.

Jason looked more startled. “He does?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Adele said firmly. That was the end of that line of inquiry.

Eventually Jason left and Tara and Sookie retreated to her room while Adele did chores. Sookie briefly recounted the encounter, up to the point when the Rattrays left.

“You did the thing,” Tara clarified.

“Yes indeed,” Sookie nodded carefully, “But it didn’t work very well. It’s not like Denise and Mack are martial arts experts or anything, they just brawl, so it’s not like I could borrow their fighting skills.”

“As long as you didn’t do anything too conspicuous,” Tara murmured.

Sookie looked away.

“Sookie!”

“Just some light telekinesis. They might not even realize,” Sookie had a far off look in her eyes, “You know how people are with magical stuff.”

“I bet the vampire noticed,” Tara said darkly.

She expected Sookie to roll her eyes and chastise Tara for her anti-vampire bias (as if being anti-vampire was a bad thing!) but instead she looked at Tara with eyes as big as saucers.

“I almost forgot to tell you!” Sookie leaned forward like she had a big secret. “I couldn’t hear him!”

It took Tara a moment to process that. “Oh,” she said slowly, “Sure.” She wasn’t quite sure why this was such momentous news, it wasn’t even all that surprising. “You seem real happy about that.”

Sookie gave her a look which indicated that Tara was missing something obvious.

“But that’s happened before,” Tara said slowly, “You can’t really hear a lot of magical...people.”

Sookie shook her head. “I can always  _ hear  _ them, it's just not as clear as it is with humans. Even when I can’t figure out  _ what  _ they're thinking, I can still  _ feel  _ them thinking. They still put pressure on my shields and everything, and it hurts my brain sometimes. But Tara,” she leaned even closer, “There was  _ nothing  _ from him. Even when I touched him-”

“You what?” Tara’s voice was sharp and too loud for how close they were. 

Sookie barely seemed to notice. “I put my hands on his face to try and see if it helped,” she rushed through that like it was an insignificant detail, “But Tara... _ nothing.  _ Actually it intensified the silence,” she said with a happy squeak, “I think it’s like how touching humans makes the telepathy so strong I drown in it. Only I was drowning in  _ silence _ .”

Tara stared at her. “Are you insane? Do you want to be killed?”

Sookie gave Tara an exasperated look, as if  _ she  _ was the one being ridiculous. “ _ Tara _ .”

“Don’t ‘ _ Tara’  _ me!” Tara glared at her. “Vampires exist to kill people.”

“No,” Sookie scowled, “Vampires have, in the past, needed to kill people to exist. There’s a difference.”

Tara wanted to hit her. Sookie’s eyebrows rose in challenge. For a moment they just glared at each other. Then they took a collective breath and the moment was over.

“Sorry,” Tara said. She didn’t really feel it but Sookie would appreciate the gesture. “I’m just worried. Plus if something happens to you I’m gonna have to stake a vampire and that sounds hard. Though I guess if the Rattrays can do it,” she added thoughtfully.

“I’m sorry too,” Sookie sounded like she did mean it, “I was just...excited. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before.” Tara wanted to object, but she realized that Sookie was right. There was a significance to all this which she’d have to figure out away from the telepath. 

Tara sighed a long suffering sigh. “You really don’t think that vampire had anything to do with Maudette.”

“If it makes you feel better, I’m pretty sure he’s never coming back.” Sookie sounded sad.

“Oh?” Tara raised an eyebrow. 

“Yeah, I bet the near draining put a damper on the night.”

_ Good riddance,  _ but she didn’t say it outloud. Sookie didn’t comment.

“You think the Rattrays will be a problem?” Tara asked.

Sookie shrugged. “Maybe. Denise was really angry. Not much to do about it though. Either they’ll try to get back at me or they won't.”

“They probably will, though.”

“It’s not like they can sneak up on me,” Sookie said quietly. 

They were silent for a moment. Tara felt fidgety. “Is there a favor you could call in? From one of your magical friends? The elves maybe?”

That surprised Sookie. “You’ve never suggested I get back in touch with the elves.” 

“I think it’ll be real bad if the Rattrays come for you.”

Sookie shook her head, “I haven’t seen any of the elves in years. I’m not sure I would even know how to get in touch. Besides, I’m pretty sure I used up my favors with them when...well you remember.” Tara fidgeted with a loose strand in her jeans. She didn’t like to remember. She couldn’t be sure, but something told her Sookie just didn’t want to inconvenience any of the things she had helped over the years, which seemed like bullshit.

“Tara,” Sookie practically whispered, “I’ll be fine. Trust me.”

After another hour or so Tara left. She was working tonight. She tugged a little on Sookie’s sleeve, and Sookie tugged back, both careful to not touch any skin. Since they didn’t hug, it was their way of showing their love and appreciation for each other. That hug really had been the weirdest part of last night for Tara.

As she got in her car and ruined her suspension on their driveway going out, she thought about what Sookie had said about touching the vampire. It was just unfair. Sookie couldn’t touch any of the people in her life. Jason couldn’t ruffle her hair, Adele couldn’t hold her hand, and Tara couldn’t hug her. She couldn’t really date (though that wasn’t because of the touching), and any date she went on couldn’t even lead to kissing, not to mention sex. She even had to be careful not to bump into anyone in crowded places. Then a vampire, a blood-sucking demon of the night shows up and because of some quirk in vampire biology she can touch him just fine. No, it was worse than that. She felt  _ relief  _ when she touched him.

Tara shook her head with the tragedy of it all then she realized something. Something so terrible she had to pull over to the side of the road to think it over.

Sookie Stackhouse had called the vampire, the only sentient thing in the world she could touch without discomfort, handsome.

_ Fuck. _

It would be fine. Sookie said she thought the vampire wouldn’t return and she was probably right. This was probably all over and Sookie’s life would go back to being completely abnormal in a regular way.

The vampire returned before the week had passed. So did the Rats.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kind of a transitional chapter, but necessary to set up some plot stuff. Next chapter will be more exciting.


	4. The Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Revenge of the Rats

In the less than a week before Bill came back, Sookie became very aware of how tense the vampire had made everyone in town.

When she came in for her next shift Sam had immediately pulled her into his office.

“Sookie, you are being a very stupid girl!” he growled.

Sookie blinked, for a moment stunned. She knew Sam was unhappy, but Sam had never been angry at her before. Now he was really, truly pissed. She was so stunned that it took her a minute to process not only what he said but the thoughts behind his words.  _ A very stupid girl.  _

She scowled. He was infantilizing her. Again.

“Who asked you?” she demanded, “I can take care of myself!”

The look he gave her was equal parts rage and exasperation. “Mack is three times your size, Sookie! He could’ve seriously cut you up!”

Her eyes narrowed.

“How do you know what -”

“And you did it over a vampire, of all things! Do you have a death wish?”

“Of course not!” Why did Sam and Tara seem to think that helping the vampire was as bad as presenting herself to him on a silver platter? “I just think that it would have been wrong to let the Rattrays cut him up, sell his parts, and kill him for being what he was. You know,  _ supernatural _ .” Sookie eyed him knowingly.

Sam went pale. His mind was rushing, trying to figure out his mistake. Ordinarily Sookie would have taken pity on him. She would have told him that it was nothing he had done, she could just tell. He wasn’t anywhere near as different as the vampire, but she had been alone in a room with Sam enough to sense the difference. Not to mention that his thoughts were muffled like someone put a wet blanket over his brain. In a crowded room his thoughts practically got lost, something she was perfectly fine with, but in a quiet space like they were in now, just the two of them, she could really hear his mind scrambling. She would’ve told him that she didn’t care, that it was none of her business, that he knew that she was different too and that she just assumed that he would tell her when he was good and ready. If he was ever good and ready.

She didn’t say any of that. For a moment, she was so angry that she watched him squirm.  _ Think of me as a dumb blond again, Sam Merlotte. I dare you.  _ She immediately felt bad about it. Regretful, even. Had she crossed a line?

Before she could begin her piece, he decided to ignore her revelation and get back on topic. Now he was twice as angry, anger was a good defensive mechanism. “Well, I won't let you put yourself and the bar in dager.” He glared at her. “I won't do it.” 

She was closer to tears than she had any reason to be. “Am I fired?” She needed this job. This was the best job she had ever had.

_ What?  _ “No!” he shouted.  _ Of course not! _ “But next time you think someone is being harmed in our parking lot, pick up a phone and call the police, do not go out there alone like a goddamn vigilante!”

Maybe she  _ was  _ an infant. She burst into tears. He was probably right. There were holes in his argument, but she was too emotionally whiplashed to figure out what they were. 

She felt his anguish at having hurt her. “Aw, cher...Don’t you know I couldn’t stand to lose you…”

He moved in for a hug and she stepped back.

“Sorry,” she choked. Why was she sorry? “I can’t hug.”

“Right,” he nodded, feeling more pain.

He instead tried calming her down with his voice and his words. He said incredibly nice things to her, all in a gentle croon. He also thought some nice things, some tender, sweet things that reminded Sookie of why she didn’t like having to read the mind of her boss.

It had been nearly impossible to get her shields back up after that.

Word travels fast in small towns. Hoyt Fortenberry, usually a sweet man who wasn’t a giant thorn in her side, had told several more of his male friends what he knew. She realized the next time that she was too close to avoid hearing his thoughts, that he was bewildered by the situation but also concerned. He wasn’t concerned about the vampire, to her later surprise when she realized just how many people were, but he was concerned that his best friend’s weird, probably mentaly dissabled but definitely psychic sister (she never corrected him on either front) was getting into violent altercations with drug dealers. At first she had been irritated, but she forgave him when she heard what others were thinking.

Rene Lenier had done a fair amount of the heavy lifting in getting the word out, aided by his girlfriend, Arlene. At first they and everyone else just thought it was amusing that tiny blond head-case Sookie Stackhouse had beaten up Mack Rattray with a chain. Soon, however, word got around that the new man at the bar that night had been a vampire, and some more nefarious ideas started to be shoved into the story. Some speculated that the vampire had hypnotised Sookie. Many agreed that he had probably fed from her. Arlene told everyone who would listen, loudly and proudly, that no good would come from vampires being in Bon Temps. People mostly agreed. Some were angry, some were afraid for themselves, and a lot of people, mostly men, were very concerned for Sookie’s sake. Especially since it was generally agreed that he was probably involved in Maudette’s murder. It infuriated her for just so many reasons, but her most vital concern was that it was starting to get in the way of her being able to do her job. Usually she stayed mostly out of the way, helped by people’s reluctance to interact with her, but now that she was the talk of the town she was finding it more difficult to keep her shields up. Every time she heard her name she would instinctively peek, only to remember a split second later that she didn’t want to know. She was used to the occasional slip up, especially on busy days, but she now had to be on guard all the time.

Sookie had been putting Andy Bellefleure’s order of a cheeseburger and fries down when she heard him.  _ Shame for her, she’s so young...and so stupid. She’s the perfect target for these fangers...they’re are all coming for our women anyway and- _

“Andy, I am not stupid and none of this concerns you” she scowled. His eyes went wide.  _ I didn’t say that outloud...did you - _

“I’ll just get you some ketchup,” she smiled brightly. That would come back to bite her in the butt, and not just because he already had ketchup.

All this over a man who probably didn’t live anywhere close to town. All this over a man who she had maybe spoken to for a grand total of fifteen minutes and was probably never coming back. That being said, she would be lying if she said she wasn’t dying to see him again (no pun intended). It wasn’t just the silence, although if she were honest with herself it was mostly the silence. It was the novelty too. The curiosity. The fangs. But also the  _ silence.  _

No matter, he was gone and Tara would probably have a stroke if she searched out more vampires on her own. The silence was gone from her life for good. She never missed it before she had met Bill, and one day it would just be a distant memory. As it should be.

Vampire Bill walked through the door.

_ Oh thank god. _

Sookie was so excited she would’ve literally pranced to his side had she not been carrying a full tray. It was probably for the best. Sookie could see him through the greeter’s eyes when he came in and it was enough for her to turn to him with her brightest smile before returning to her customers. The greeter, a teenager named Denny, knew what he was this time and decided to give him one of Sookie’s booths. It would have been ridiculous, the booth could’ve sat a family of four, but Bill didn’t want to sit at the bar (where Tara was trying to kill him with a look), and the only small tables available were in Arlene’s section. Besides, it was a weeknight and it wasn’t terribly busy. 

Once he had sat his eyes never left Sookie, who quickly distributed the food to her customers and skipped to his side.

“Good evening, Miss Stackhouse,” he said politely. 

“You returned,” she answered breathlessly.

_ Sookie…  _ Tara was very antsy at the bar.

Sookie relaxed in his void. She wanted to bathe in it. Was that weird?

“Yes,” he raised an eyebrow curiously, “You assumed I would not?

Sookie grinned happily. “What can I get for you tonight?”

“What are you?” he asked, skipping the preamble. 

Sookie’s grin got harder. “I’m a waitress.”

He seemed thoughtful, and extremely curious and he looked at her as if the answer would appear if he just examined her thoroughly enough. “You’re certainly more than human.”

“The synthetic blood is coming in tomorrow. Would you like a glass of red wine?” she asked with forced geniality. 

Instead of answering that, he gently took her hand.

She was sure there would be a collective mental gasp at the bar. She was aware that everyone had been watching them. Sam must be beside himself. Tara must be having an aneurysm. But she couldn’t hear them. She couldn’t hear their judgement or their commentary. There was no greek chorus. She was alone.

She wasn’t. She was alone with him, gazing into his deep eyes. Was she staring too much? She couldn’t hear. Was she supposed to be doing something? Would he view her allowing him to take her hand as a sign of weakness? She couldn’t know. Not unless he told her. 

Her ignorance was blissful. Her ignorance was terrifying. Her ignorance was  _ hers.  _ These were all her own anxieties, no one else's, and in the meantime she was  _ touching  _ someone. She hadn’t realized how comforting a human touch could be until now.

He drew her hand a little closer. 

“Sookie,” he played with her name on his tongue. “It’s an unusual name, Sookie. Is it short for something else?” 

“Nope, just plain Sookie,” she said. She realized she didn’t need to keep her shields up. She felt her face relax as they came down. She heard some noises at the edge of the silence, but she could just nestle more into his void to escape them. She wondered if he felt it when she did that.

He gave no indication that he did. “Well, just plain Sookie...may I call on you sometime?”

The words sounded familiar in an almost nostalgic way, but she couldn’t quite place them. “Call on me?”

“May I come visit you at your home?”

“Oh.” He was old. Was this his version of asking her out? Was she interested in him in that way? The townsfolk would have a field day, but it was so difficult to care when she couldn’t hear them. He was attractive, certainly, and apparently charming when he wanted to be. That would be enough for Lafayette. He was silent, which took away the pain of her telepathy. That would be enough for Tara (if she weren’t being so protective). He was probably capable of having sex. That would be enough for Jason. What was enough for her? What did  _ she  _ want?

She wanted to ask for Gran’s advice. 

“Alright,” she nodded slowly, “My grandmother would love to meet you.” Meeting a relative on a first date seemed like something a man would shy away from, but Bill gave no indication that it was odd. “Oh!” Sookie remembered with a start. She frowned. She really didn’t want to do this, but Gran  _ had  _ asked and she  _ had  _ promised...ugh “Can I talk to you after work? I have a favor to ask you.”

Vampire Bill nodded. “Of course, I am in your debt.” He sure didn’t sound happy about it.

“Not a favor for me!” she explained hastily. She was feeling jittery. “Just...if you’ll be up - well, I guess you will be - would you mind meeting me at the employee door in back when I get off at...probably around one thirty?” 

He nodded. “I’d be delighted.”

Sookie couldn’t help the smile that took over her face. He agreed to meet with her! Bill seemed surprised by how genuine it was and he smiled back. “Alright! I’ll see you then!” 

She took her hand back.

The onslaught of noise was almost painful.

_...fucking crazy… _

_...Maudette  _ just  _ died… _

_...out of your mind _ ,  _ bitch, he wants you for… _

_...it’s always the good girls… _

_...glad Sookie made a friend from the experience… _

Sookie closed her eyes, felt the pad in her hands and regrouped for her shields. She constructed them hastily, and poorly. She would need a fifteen soon, but at least they were enough to hold back the onslaught. When she opened her eyes Bill was watching her curiously. She smiled, nodded, then ignored the eyes on her as she went to the back. She tracked his void as he left.

The rest of her shift seemed to take forever. Each customer took years to decide what they wanted, it felt like, and then decades to consume their consumables. All the while the bar stared at her with their eyes and scrutinized her with their thoughts. Some approached. Arlene took her aside and looked deep into her eyes. She was sure that Sookie had been hypnotised, which Sookie would have felt much more annoyed by if the concern hadn’t been so maternal. As she passed Rene and Hoyt, Rene gently tapped her on the shoulder and warned her, not unkindly, to stay away from vampires, “They’re flashy, but they're not like us.” Sam glowered. Dawn thought vampires were a bad place to  _ start  _ dating, at least, but felt that it wasn’t her place to judge and stayed out of it. Lafayette had heard about the hand holding and knew how significant it was. He winked and teased her for having a crush, but she could hear the concern that he wasn’t sharing out loud. Everyone assumed that something was going on between her and the vampire. Why else would she bother to associate with him at all?

Tara was the worst by far. She didn’t say anything, but she knew that Sookie could hear her internal monologue. Usually people didn’t stay fixated on things in their mind quite like this, but Tara’s best friend was a telepath and she had a lot of practice in directing her thoughts. Sookie was especially attuned to her, as well, so she could always hear the low rumbling even from across the bar with her shields up. After her fifteen her shields became strong enough to keep Tara out unless she was within a yard or two. Which happened often, considering that they worked at a bar and Tara was the bartender.

_...This is stupid Sookie...this is really... _

_...What would your Gran - no forget that one… _

_...I won’t let you just walk into his trap. No Ma’am… _

That was it.

“I’m not asking your permission,” she snapped as Tara poured a shaken old fashioned.

A nearby couple looked up with surprise at her outburst. 

“I am a grown woman. I am the one who decides what I do. Not you, not Sam, not even Gran. So shut it and get on board or walk away.”

Tara’s nostrils flared in rage and indignation and fear. Sookie understood how she felt, of course, but she was pretty sure she was just as angry and just as indignant. Maybe just as afraid, too, but for entirely different reasons. Sookie walked around to the bar and took the drink from Tara (who, in an extremely petty moment which Sookie wouldn’t hold against her, thought about refusing to give the drink to the waitress). They were fighting. It wasn’t their first. It probably wouldn’t last long.

Eventually the shift was over and the bar cleared out. Sookie was closing, so everyone left before her. Tara stalked out without a glance her way. Lafayette waved goodbye affectionately. She walked by Sam without acknowledging him to get her stuff and left out the back door.

The night was damp. The moon was bright. She tried to go through her focusing techniques. She felt with her own skin. She smelt with her own nose. She listened with her own ears.

She heard the door open and close.

“Sookie,” Sam said.

“Sam,” she replied coolly.

The crickets chirped during their silence.

“Do you want me to wait with you until -”

He had been listening from across the room. Apparently he could do that. 

“Go home, Sam.”

She could hear the gears turning in his head as he decided what to do.

“Good night,” he said quietly. 

He walked away. His mobile home was just next to the employee parking lot, so he didn’t walk far. She decided to put more space between them and move to her car.

She checked her phone. One forty two. No vampiric void yet. The moon was insistently bright, like it was trying to warn her of something. 

She realized that there were two other minds around. They were far enough away from her that she couldn’t hear them clearly, but she realized that there was something off about them. Their thoughts were angry and dark, like Sam’s had been but with actual intent behind them. They were looking for her, she realized, looking for violence. She thought they were human, but their thinking was wrong in some way. As if they were on some kind of drug. She heard a car.

Their thoughts were too fast, but in an extremely precise way. Meth? No, their thoughts would be racing, but not as clear. The car skidded around the corner. Cocaine? Did anyone do cocaine in Bon Temps? It didn’t seem likely, and these minds were still -

V. She realized it with absolute certainty as she was caught in the Rats’ headlights. The Rats were completely hyped up on V. And they intended to run her over. 

Completely on instinct she lifted her hands and pushed with her mind. The moon reached down to help. All she had wanted to do was get the car to stop, but the energy had to go somewhere. With a terrible crunching sound the car lifted into the air and flipped again and again. It landed at an angle and rolled over before ending up on its wheels with a creak. All of its windows had shattered. 

For a moment she felt stunned. And drained.

_ Oh no,  _ Sookie thought in a panic,  _ did I... _

Any guilt or compassion she felt for the Rats was drowned out by her self preservation instincts as she realized that not only were they not dead, but they weren’t nearly as banged up as they should be (they were almost more vampire than human, where on earth did they get this much V?) Not only that but they were still coming at her. 

Mack ran straight for her. There wasn’t much she could do, she was unarmed and not very used to fighting. Instinctually she stepped out of the way, which wouldn’t have worked if she hadn’t also redirected his momentum so he was going too fast the wrong way. He stumbled and fell, but he would be back up in no time. 

She heard Denise’s intent before the gun came out. In a panic she focused on that and tried to mentally push the gun out of her hand. It didn’t work. She heard the sound of the gun and instantly felt the torn flesh of her arm where it grazed her. She cried out in pain. It was such that she barely heard Mack before he kicked her from behind.

“Where’s your chain now?” he sneered and kicked her side. She tried to get up. She mentally pulled all she could to her as she clawed at the earth that was absorbing her blood. The trees were too far away. The clouds would take time to gather. With a loud bang the Rats’ car exploded in a burst of flame. That barely distracted them. Instead it seemed to excite them and their blood lust more. She felt the fire leaning towards her, but it was too far away to reach them. 

Denise kicked her in the stomach. Mack kicked her in the back and she heard something crack. She curled into a fetal position. Her vision was fading. A dog barked in the distance.

She wasn’t done. 

She stole the energy from the fire. She stole the energy from the Rattray’s kicks causing them to slow. 

Denise looked down. “What -”

The dog tackled Mack. 

When Denise looked up Sookie grabbed her bare leg. Her hand glowed an ugly, orange glow and it was hot. Denise screamed as her skin was seared. She tore her leg away and kicked Sookie in the head. 

_ Now _ Sookie was done. 

The moon reached down urgently, but Sookie could barely feel it, or anything. Her sixth sense was fading. The first five senses had faded. She was dying. She felt so bad for everyone. Gran had already buried two children. Tara viewed herself as Sookie’s protector. Jason had no one. Sam would have to hire a new waitress. 

Then in an oddly familiar way, her sixth sense lit up like the fourth of July. Movement, movement everywhere, zooming back and forth. And filling the space of the new visitor’s mind was the loveliest void.

Then she succumbed to her own void and all was black. 

When she came to she was in the woods. She was still in the moon’s embrace. It was reaching for her, stroking her hair-

No...that couldn’t have been the moon.

“I can’t feel my legs,” she tried to say. There was too much fluid in her throat to get the words out correctly.

Vampire Bill hummed gently.

“I’m dying,” she concluded.

“Yes,” he agreed, “I can help with that.”

“Thanks, but I don’t want to be a vampire.” Talking was hard.

He stroked her hair, “You won’t. If you drink my blood you will be healed.”

In other circumstances she would put up more of a fight, but she could feel the void encroaching on her consciousness. 

She nodded weakly. 

The hand that was stroking her left, which was a shame. It had felt nice. It was replaced by another hand which lifted her head up extremely painfully. She heard a crunch, then something wet and lukewarm was pushed against her lips. 

“Hurry,” he said, “Drink before the wound closes.”

She latched onto his arm and sucked. 

At first she felt nothing but pain. Drinking was painful. It was thick and sweet and savory, whatever this was (oh right, his blood), but not-

_ Oh… _

She felt a warmth blooming in the pit of her stomach. Her sore arms found the strength to move and grabbed his arm, pulling it more securely against her. She moaned as she drank. It wasn’t enough. She pulled hard. She heard Bill grunt next to her. This must be painful for him, but she couldn’t bring herself to slow down. Bones snapped back into place. The warmth blossomed and filled her limbs with strength. He gently extracted his arm. She wanted to protest.

She passed out.

When she came-to again she felt normal. Better than normal. Great. Every sensation was intensified. The moss she was laying on felt extremely soft. The moon looked extremely bright. The man above her licking her head wound seemed extremely gentle.

She wanted to feel indignant, but she could hardly begrudge him this. Besides, it didn’t hurt as it should.

He rose and gazed at her, his eyes half lidded.

“Do I taste different from other people?” she asked curiously. Her throat was clear.

“Yes,” his voice sounded thick. He looked at her pleadingly. “What are you?”

“I’m not dead,” she said slowly, coming to the realization. She wanted to move. She wiggled her fingers. She pushed him away, which he allowed her to do reluctantly, though he didn’t move far. She tried to sit up and found that while she was full of energy, she was also quite stiff. She leaned on her elbows and tried to find the will to sit up more. 

She was very light headed. So light headed that before he could help her up she reached out to a nearby tree and did something as natural to her as walking, but also probably very stupid. Her hand glowed, a little more gently than it had earlier in the evening. The tree eagerly reached for her light. A few of its branches twisted and turned and grew a little to get to her, and she used the hand rest to pull herself up to sitting.

Vampire Bill watched with wide eyes.

Her mouth formed into a lopsided smile before she could think about it. “I don’t know what I am,” she admitted. “I think I’m human, I probably am. I don’t really fit in with other magical creatures.”

He examined her thoughtfully. “You are telekinetic. You control trees.”

“Not quite, but sort of,” her brain was fuzzy in a pleasant way. “Unfortunately, however, I am completely telepathic. I can read thoughts.”

He frowned slightly. “Even mine?”

“No, that’s why I like you so much,” she said with a weak smile. It was all she could muster right now. She reached for his hand and held it. There were no thoughts around, she didn’t need his void, although it eased the pulsing of the woods and it felt nice to have a hand in hers. “You have no idea how peaceful that is. After a lifetime of blah, blah, blah, to hear...nothing.” Her eyes fluttered closed as she basked in the stillness. 

He lifted her up and deposited her on his lap, leaning her head gently into his chest. She didn’t mind. “Might I ask you a personal question?”

She hummed happily. He could ask her anything.

“How do you manage socializing with men? With men your age, their only thought is still surely how to get you into bed.”

“I don’t. Manage. I don’t date.”

That seemed to surprise him. “Ever?”

“I tried a few times when I was younger.” Mostly they were pigs. Not all, one was extremely in denial about how gay he was. Mostly, though, they were pigs. She tried to forgive them for that, after all thoughts don’t matter as much as actions. But it was hard, especially then, to distinguish between what was in someone’s mind and what they said out loud.

Then she went out with JB. He was also a pig, but kind of a sweet one. At the very least, she never felt degraded by his dirty thoughts. She had decided that maybe she could force herself past the difficulty with him. She was not asexual, she had desires, maybe if she could just get past the initial discomfort she could satisfy them. She had ended up at Lafayette’s house in tears. Tara was already there, and the three of them had a girls night where it was just generally agreed on that she probably couldn’t have sex. She was heartbroken. She got over it.

She shook her head to get out of her musings. “It never worked out,” she said simply. 

He cocked his head. “Do you hide your talent from everyone?”

“I try. Except for Tara. Poor Tara,” poor Tara who had been as lonely as Sookie. Poor Tara, whose only friend had a burden that was too heavy for her to carry on her own.

Bill didn’t ask more questions. The fog in her brain cleared a bit.

“Oh shoot,” she realized she had been babbling, “I apologize for talking so much.”

Bill seemed amused. Had he always been this expressive? “Let me show you to your car.” She moved off of him more fluidly than she had expected to. He rose and offered his hand, which she took.

“Sookie, why did you want to talk to me tonight?” he asked as they walked back. 

Right, she had, hadn’t she? Why…? Oh...right. This could be awkward.

“Well...I told my grandmother about you.”

“You did?” he seemed surprised.

“Not about the whole incident...just...may I ask how old you are? Am I allowed to ask that?” Sookie felt very shy now.

“It’s a personal question for a vampire,” he mused, “I was turned in 1865, when I was thirty human years old.”

“Really? You look older than that,” she said without thinking.

He shrugged with a small smile. “Times were harder then.”

“Did you fight in the Civil War?” They were getting closer to it.

“Yes.”

No avoiding it then. “Would you be willing to come to my grandmother’s club? It’s mostly a bunch of old people who had family in the war. They call themselves the Descendents of the Glorious Dead.”

Bill’s face soured. “The Glorious Dead,” he said quietly. Sookie winced. It felt like she had just asked Terry, a vet from Iraq, to come to a meeting to share the wonders of warfare. She had seen the inside of his mind. It was scary. Everyday was a struggle for him. She felt gross. 

But she had promised. And she knew Gran meant well.

“I think they're mostly interested in things like uniforms and troop movements,” she said in her weak defence, “Or the way people lived back then. That sort of thing.”

“Clean things.”

Sookie sighed. “Yes.”

“Would it make you happy if I did this?”

She blinked. She wasn’t expecting that kind of response. 

“Ah...yeah, it would make my grandmother ecstatic.”

“Would it make  _ you  _ happy,” he asked. He was in front of her now, gazing at her again. 

Sookie blushed. “Yes,” she admitted with a small smile.

“Then I’ll do it,” he said, as if she had just needed to lead with that. “When may I call on you.” 

She was riding a new kind of high. Something about the way he looked at her made her feel extremely attractive and gave her butterflies in her stomach. “I’m not working tomorrow.” Her voice sounded strange.

He smirked a little. “Just after dark then.”

When they reached her car she saw Sam’s light was on again.

“Huh,” she began. She turned to look at Bill, but he had vanished. “Okay,  _ that’s  _ creepy,” she murmured to herself. She unlocked her car and sat down, still buzzing with all the good things that happened tonight. Starting to wonder if maybe she could date someone after all. 

It didn’t occur to her until the next day that the debris from her fight with the Rats was gone.


	5. The Date

Sookie woke up feeling great. Better than great. She hopped out of bed and went to the window to feel the sun’s warmth on her face. She felt like she could leap out the window and fly.

She didn’t try. 

She went downstairs and greeted Gran who was already working on breakfast. “Morning Sookie,” she greeted over her shoulder. 

“Morning,” Sookie agreed cheerfully. She grabbed a cup of coffee and moved to the porch. It was a bright, hot day and she felt like she was swimming in sunlight. It made her feel powerful and happy. It made her want to glow back at the sun playfully.

She went back inside when Gran called her and sat down to a breakfast of sausage and eggs. Tina, her cat, paced around her feet waiting for droppings.

“This is so good Gran. Did you do something different?” Sooke asked, taking her first bite of sausage.

“No, dear, it's the same sausage I always make.”

Sookie shook her head in wonder, “It’s really great today. Are the ingredients fresher?”

Gran thought about that, “No, I don’t think so.” She eyed her granddaughter more carefully. _She’s in a good mood…_ “Did the vampire come back?”

Sookie jumped at how easily she figured it out. “Ah...yes,” Sookie nodded. Gran had asked about the vampire a few times, and Sookie hadn’t the heart to tell her that she didn’t expect him to come around again any time soon. “He...well he’s coming over to meet with us tonight.”

“Tonight?” Gran jumped from her chair, “That’s so soon! There’s so much cleaning to do!”

“Gran -” but the matriarch had left the room, fretting about beginning the wash. 

Sookie heard a car and was surprised to feel Tara pulling in. Her mind was forlorn. When she came into the room the two women looked at each other for a moment, before Tara got a cup of coffee and sat across from Sookie.

“I’m acting like your mother, and I shouldn’t be.”

Sookie smiled and nodded. It was the closest she would get to an apology, and it was as much as she needed. 

“I’m just worried,” Tara explained.

“You’re always worried,” Sookie complained gently.

Tara snorted. “You always give me reason to be.” She took a sip from her mug. “What did the vampire want anyway.”

Sookie frowned. She had been avoiding thinking about that. 

She checked for Gran, who was washing the curtains, then in a low voice gave Tara a basic rundown of what had happened last night. The Rats had tried to run her down. They were high on V and had a gun. Sookie tried to fight them off but Bill, the vampire’s name was Bill, ended up saving her. She passed out and she woke up in the woods. Tara was stunned and not a little concerned.

“What happened to the Rattrays?” she asked.

Sookie sighed. “I’m not sure,” but she could guess.

Tara accepted that, but then she looked Sookie over. Sookie didn’t look like she had been beaten half to death. Sookie didn’t respond to that thought. For some reason she didn’t want to tell Tara about the vampire blood. For one thing, Tara would probably completely freak out, but also something about the moment had been intimate and personal. She just wasn’t ready to share yet. Tara decided that the bump on her head must be covered by her hair and moved on.

“Did he feed on you,” Tara asked insistently.

 _A little_ , “No,” Sookie lied. 

“Are you sure? ‘Cause you know they can hypnotize you.”

Sookie rolled her eyes as the phone rang. “Yeah, and black people are lazy and jews have horns.”

Tara narrowed her eyes.

_More death…_

Sookie looked toward Gran’s mind. Tara was bemused, “Wha-” Sookie held up a finger.

Her Gran came in the kitchen just as Sookie got the whole story. “You will never believe what happened! A tornado touched down over Four Tracks Corners,” she looked between the two of them, “It turned over that rent trailer in the clearing. You know the one? It killed that couple that’s been staying there!”

“Mack and Denise Rattray?” Tara asked sharply.

Sookie felt herself sinking a little into her chair.

Gran nodded, “They were trapped under the trailer. Mike Spencer said they were crushed to a pulp.”

“Really,” Tara looked at Sookie, “Huh.”

Tara and Gran went back and forth about that for a moment. No one had seen a storm, but the trailer was pretty isolated. There has to be a big storm for a tornado though… 

Gran knew there was something going on between Sookie and Tara, but she stayed out of it. Tara tried not to look directly at Sookie, but her thoughts were pretty focused.

Sookie felt sick. Was it possible that it had been Bill? Or did she…

As soon as Gran left she got up from her chair. “Sook,” Tara muttered. Her eyes were worried.

“There are only two options, Tara,” Sookie murmured back.

She drove to Four Tracks Corners.

She got out of the car feeling anxious. Police tape surrounded the ruined trailer in a messy perimeter. She walked right up to the tape. Yes, indeed, the trailer looked like it had been gotten by a tornado. The trailer itself was turned over, and a beaten down car was nearby. Trees were split and the trailer was covered in broken branches. 

Did she do this? It was possible.

The fight with the Rats was kind of a blur. She remembered the moment before the blackness when she reached out for everything with all of her senses. She had even reached out for the sky. Had she altered some kind of weather pattern and caused -

No. The more she thought about it the less likely it seemed. For one, that fight had taken place in the parking lot of Merlotte’s, which was miles from here. Weather was weird, tugging the atmosphere one way could lead to a host of changes elsewhere, but it seemed awfully coincidental that whatever she had reached for in her desperation would result in a storm that just so happened to target the Rats’ trailer. Besides, she didn’t think she could just create a tornado accidentally. Not on a bright, clear night, anyway.

So Bill must’ve done this.

She looked at a tree that was torn from the ground which apparently had been shoved through a window. What strength…

She heard the van driving up before she felt the heads inside. She winced. Mike Spencer was a portly middle aged man with a permanently genial expression and a friendly disposition. Everytime he could see her toes he thought about sucking them. Sookie wished she hadn't worn sandals. Sookie began to build her shields up while he was still driving up and -

They snapped into place.

Sookie felt a little whiplashed. Huh?

“Well, Sookie Stackhouse!” Mike Spencer called. 

She smiled over her confusion and waved. Since when did her shields just snap like that?

“Whatcha doing here?”

She schooled her face into something that said _what a shame._ “I heard what happened, and I just had to come look. What an awful thing.”

“Awful, yes,” Sheriff Bud Dearborne said as he climbed out of the jeep. “This is a restricted crime scene, Miss Stackhouse.” Sheriff Dearborne was older and had a reputation for being a good man. Whenever they spoke he found the opportunity to tell her kind things about her father. She and Sheriff Dearborne had seen very different sides of her father. “Besides,” he said approaching her, “I heard you weren’t too fond of the Rattrays.”

She felt a chill in her stomach. “We had a disagreement,” she said slowly, “they were hurting a friend of mine.”

“This would be the vamper I’ve been hearing about?” He asked calmly. “The one who is living at the old Compton house?”

“Yes sir.” She felt a slight shock. The Compton house was just across the way from her house. She and Bill were neighbors.

“Your grandmother lets you associate with vampires?” Mike asked in astonishment.

“You can take that up with her,” Sookie smiled sweetly, “I’m sure she’d just _love_ to know that somebody thinks she’s not taking proper care of me.” Plus she was twenty-five. She turned back to Bud Dearborne. “The Rattrays were draining him. Draining vampires is against the law, isn’t it?”

“Actually no, there’s no law for that here,” Dearborne responded lazily.

In her annoyance Sookie peered over her shield and picked through his knowledge of the law. “There sure is for assault, though,” she found, “I was just doing my civic duty by stopping them.”

Bud narrowed his eyes at her. “And now they’re dead.”

“Yes, awful,” Sookie agreed, “Killed by a _tornado._ ”

“Tornadoes hop,” Dearborne informed her. “This one didn’t land anywhere else. And nobody around here heard or saw anything like a tornado last night.”

“Are you telling me you seriously think one man could do all this?”

“He’s not a man.”

She glared at him. When she was fourteen and the guilt had been eating her alive she would’ve given anything to have the police know that she had been the one to create that tornado, to maybe be served some justice, but this was asinine. What was frustrating was that he was right, but he didn’t have any reason to be. He didn’t know that vampires were incredibly strong, heck _she_ hadn’t until five minutes ago. He just didn’t like them. He thought they were bad and he listened to evangelicals on talk radio confirm that belief. He just wanted to pin this impossible crime on someone he viewed as an invader in their little town for the sake of righting a wrong, but not the one he was investigating. 

“If you bothered to get to know one you might just like him,” she said righteously. She started to walk away.

“You’re a good girl, Sookie,” he called as she walked away, “I hate to see you go down this path. What would your father say?”

“My father’s dead,” she replied coldly, “And lucky for you, Sheriff, nobody’s forcing you to watch.”

She had to walk close enough to Mike Spencer for him to bypass her shields to get to her car. Yep, toes, every time. She shut the door and drove away before she could really process her anger. From the tone of his thoughts, it seemed unlikely that he was actually going to go after Bill for a natural disaster. Was he wrong to be suspicious? It wasn’t his fault that she could read the underpinnings of that suspicion. And yes, the reasons why he was suspicious were wrong, but as she processed her confusion, she felt a guilty tug in her chest.

The Rattrays were probably truly behind her, but she wasn’t sure that they should be.

She would’ve killed the Rats if she had to, but that had been self-defense. She was hardly surprised to confirm their grim fate, nor would she shed a tear for them, but she couldn’t imagine any creature who had done _that_ claiming self-defense as a reasonable excuse. He could’ve incapacitated them, easily. They were a serious threat to Sookie while they were hyped up on V, but certainly not to him. They were in the middle of committing an atrocity, but did that make it right for Bill to play judge, jury and executioner? Bud Dearborne’s intent was plain old racist (speciest? Actually that fit better), but had Bill really done nothing wrong?

She shook her head. She was looking a gift horse in the mouth. She was alive because of Bill. It was ungrateful to question Bill. She tried to ignore the voice in her head telling her that it made her complicit not to. 

When she got back, Gran was furiously vacuuming. “Sookie, dear, could you get the curtains out of the washer?”

Sookie nodded. “Gran, he sleeps in the ground all day. I don’t think he’ll notice the rug.”

Gran gave her a look. “I’m not doing this for him. I’m doing this for me, so I can feel proud of my home. And how do you know where he sleeps?”

Sookie shrugged. She didn’t.

“Jason and Tara are coming over this evening, by the way.”

Sookie groaned. “ _Gran._ ”

Gran was unrepentant. “They invited themselves.”

“And you didn’t refuse them?”

Gran raised an eyebrow. _That wouldn’t be hospitable._ “Jason said that he wants to meet the vampire for himself.” Sookie scowled. “And Tara said she thought she ought to be here as well.”

“Everybody’s getting their panties in a wad,” Sookie grumbled.

“Did you want to be alone with him?” Gran asked a little hopefully. She had been worried about Sookie’s lack of prospects with men.

“I just...think it would be bad if Jason tried to beat him up.” Or if Tara spoke with him at all on any topic, although she might be too obsessed with Jason to be protective of Sookie. And yes, she had kind of wanted to be alone with him.

Gran rose with the authority of a king. “That boy will be civil in my house,” she declared. It was impressive, but Sookie still thought she was being overly optimistic.

Gran ordered her to clean the bathrooms (did vampires even use bathrooms?) while she dusted, vacuumed, and mopped. About an hour before sunset Sookie showered, changed, and put on some makeup. Jason and Tara were there by the time she got downstairs. Jason was glowering and Tara was glowing at his side. Sookie wondered if she should say something to her one of these days.

They hung around the livingroom at Sookie’s request. She was hoping that they would stay on one side of the room and her the other and that it would be enough space to shield against the thoughts she had no interest in hearing. It might have worked, despite her being so in tune with them had Jason not been pacing like a wild animal ready to defend his territory. 

“Look, I’m just saying, do you want a vampire sucking blood out of you?” he demanded. 

She didn’t actually hear the word _slut,_ but that’s the tone she got from his mind.

“I’m just trying to get to know the man, that’s all,” she replied coldly. She might get in trouble with gran if she killed him. He paced away.

“That’s where it’s gonna end up. Always does.” She could feel Tara’s tacit agreement beyond the shield. He paced closer.

“What do you know about vampires anyway?”

He straightened with authority. “I know a lot more than I care to.”

He was too close. It had something to do with Dawn. Or Maudette? He felt jealous, no….insecure, not quite...emasculated.

Sookie rolled her eyes.

Sookie felt panic from the kitchen. Gran was making food for the food eating party-crashers and had realized that the porch hadn’t yet been swept. Before she said the words Sookie seized on the excuse to leave took the broom from the closet and went outside to take care of it. 

As she finished she felt a spark of movement behind her, then a void. 

She smiled and turned to him. “Good to see you.” She walked back into the house and realized that the void wasn’t following her. She came back to the door with a questioning look.

“You have to invite me in,” he seemed embarrassed, “Otherwise it’s physically impossible for me to enter a mortal’s home.”

She blinked. “Really?” She smiled playfully. “Come on, try.”

“I can’t even try,” he looked irritable. 

Sookie laughed, “That is so weird.” She moved to the side and made a grand beckoning gesture, “Oh, Bill, won’t you please come in?”

His pleasantries were very similar to Gran’s. They greeted, thanked and complemented each other. She was thrilled to learn that he remembered the small dwelling that had become her home and gave him a lengthy history of the additions and renovations that had gone into it over the years. Sookie and Bill sat next to each other on the couch. Tara and Jason barely spoke to him from their position on the surrounding chairs. Tara’s glare was piercing. Jason’s was infuriated. Sookie wished she could hold Bill’s hand and cocoon herself in his void without starting World War III, but at least it was next to her.

“I guess you heard about the strange tornado,” Gran opened.

Tara’s eyes by all rights should have lit him on fire. 

“Tell me,” Bill said calmly. 

Shortly after that they moved on to the subject of his human life. He met all of Gran’s inquiries politely. His mother’s family were the Loudermilks. They were still plentiful, however old Jessie Compton had been the last of his father’s line.

“I know. That’s why I came back. The land reverted to me.”

Jason questioned the legality of that furiously. Sookie was genuinely worried that he might hurt himself.

Tina came up to him and sniffed him. Bill pet her and pushed her away gently. Tina came back. She seemed fascinated by his scent. 

Did he know the Stackhouse’s? Why yes, they had come in a wagon when he was just sixteen. 

“Did you own slaves?” Tara asked sharply.

The white people in the room got very quiet.

“Yes,” he said simply, “A house slave, a middle-aged woman whose name I cannot recall, and a yard slave. A young, strong man named Minus.”

“Oh that’s just the sort of thing my club will be so interested in hearing about,” Gran said happily.

“About slaves?” Tara complained.

“About anything to do with that time,” Gran corrected Tara gently.

 _Yeah...about how the slaves were perfectly happy with all the_ good _masters..._

Sookie focused very hard on the void. 

“I look forward to speaking to your club, Mrs. Stackhouse,” he said genially, “Now if it’s alright with you, I thought that Sookie and I might take a walk. It’s such a lovely night.” He offered her his hand which she took eagerly. She suppressed a sigh of relief. She even found it sweet that he had kind of asked Gran’s permission. 

“Go on then,” her Gran was clearly happy, “It’s alright with me if it’s alright with Sookie.”

Jason rose out of his chair. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.” 

“Well, I don’t think it’s any of your business,” Sookie retorted cooly. 

“She’s right Jason,” Gran agreed.

Jason tried to look intimidating. “Look, Gran, I am the man in this family -”

That was a mistake.

“You are _a_ man in this family,” Gran almost seemed taller than him in that instance, “But I am the oldest person here and this is _my_ house. You _better_ respect me, _boy._ ”

Jason looked at her like he was a child.

“Actually,” Bill said with a small smile for Gran, “ _I_ am the oldest person here.” Sookie thought Gran might have blushed a little at that. He looked at Sookie, “Shall we?”

Her smile was radiant as she walked with him out of the house.

They walked far away from the feeling of other voices. The frogs croaked, the crickets chirped, the moon watched. She let down her shields and let her mind relax.

“I went to the Rattrays’ trailer,” Sookie began quietly, “I don’t believe I fully gauged the extent of your strength.”

Bill nodded. “Over the years we become stronger, and more skillful of hiding what we’ve done.”

The grass was crushed under the weight of their feet. “Was...thank you,” she remembered her manners, “But was it really necessary to kill them?”

“Yes,” he said simply. _Deal with it,_ his voice implied. 

“Did you feed on them?” she asked quietly.

“After I’d given you my blood, while you were healing. You drank a lot of my blood,” he said defensively. As if he was saying the price of Sookie’s life was the Rattrays’ death.

_Deal with it._

“Were you hungrier when you were younger?” she asked curiously.

He hadn’t expected that. They spoke a bit on the logistics of being a young vampire. Sometimes the way he spoke made him seem truly alien, like he understood the concept of morality but it hadn’t applied to him in a long time. It was nice though, to listen to his voice and not his head, to not know what was going to come out of his mouth. She worried about herself a bit though. She worried that she didn’t always provide the right answers, that she said things which made him angry without meaning to. 

Eventually she had to ask, though. Even if it made him mad. It was important.

“What will your blood do to me?”

He hedged, “Well, you’ll have keener senses…”

“What else?”

“Your libido will be more active,” he said matter of factly.

Sookie blushed. “Is that all?”

“I wonder,” he was thoughtful. 

She waited for him to speak. She found that it was difficult to be patient.

“I wonder if it will do something to your other...abilities.” 

She froze. Was that possible?

“Last night, I said you were telekinetic and you indicated that I was wrong.”

“Not wrong exactly.” He looked merely curious. Was she really going to do this? Explain her power, her most closely guarded secret, the thing she only really spoke openly about to Tara, to a man she had just met? Practically a stranger?

She was. She glanced around them, they were by the graveyard near their two properties, no one was around. She slid her bracelet off her wrist, a cheap, solid loop of copper, and tossed it into the air. It came down slowly, like it was being lowered by a string and spun around with increased frequency. 

“What are you doing?” Bill asked. He sounded awestruck.

“Manipulating the energy,” Sookie explained quietly. She released the bracelet with her mind and caught it with her hands.

He gave her a sideways glance. “That’s not telekinesis?”

“I suppose it could be,” Sookie shrugged, “When I think of telekinesis I think of superheroes who can move things with their mind. I can’t really do that, I just...redirect the movement that’s already there. I can’t make something move that isn’t already moving.”

Bill nodded thoughtfully. “And the trees?”

“Ah, that’s just the glowing,” Sookie lifted her hand casually and her fingertips emitted a cool blue light which the moon tugged on greedily. “Trees like sunlight, and they really like whatever I do. I can’t really control them very well, I just attract them.”

“And no one knows about this?” he said, bewildered.

Sookie sighed. “Everyone _knows,_ they just don’t _know._ ” She started walking again and he walked with her. “The only thing I can’t really hide is the telepathy, because I always know things I’m not supposed to. My relatives, Gran and Jason, know about the rest of it because as a child I didn’t realize…” Sookie frowned. She didn’t try to hide it because she didn’t realize it was something only she could do. It took her awhile to piece together the world from a normal person’s perspective, to understand what the laws of nature were supposed to be. “Jason pretends that he doesn’t know what he saw, and Gran...well…I guess she does too.” She remembered a night as a teenager when she was running a terrible fever and couldn’t stop glowing. Gran had wanted to help, but couldn’t stop thinking about the man who wasn’t Sookie’s grandfather…

Sookie shook her head. There were things she knew but didn’t know as well.

“Lafayette knows about the telepathy. And Tara…” she hesitated.

“Tara?” he prodded.

Sookie smiled sadly. “She’s my closest friend. When I was a teenager I got a lot stronger very quickly and I wasn’t able to control myself very well. Tara helped me...clean up my messes.”

He was quiet for a moment. “Were there a lot of those? Messes?”

“Yes,” she said simply. _Deal with it,_ her voice implied. He didn’t ask.

After a few moments he spoke again. “I would have a hard time cleaning my messes without glamour.”

“Glamour,” she played with the word, “Is that like hypnosis?”

“Kind of. It’s similar. All humans are susceptible to it.”

“Have you ever done it to me?” she asked.

“...No.”

_Liar._

“I tried once, when the Rattrays tried to drain me,” he admitted, “I was very thirsty and not looking you directly in the eye so it didn’t work, but I promise I won’t ever again,” he finished insistently.

She believed him. “No, go on, try.”

He frowned at her. “No, I shouldn’t.”

“I want to see what it’s like.”

“I’m not comfortable with that.”

“You already tried it once!”

“Yes, but I’m...courting you now.”

She laughed softly. _Courting._ “I just want to see what it’s like.”

The look he gave her was far more tortured than she expected, and it doused her humor, but it smoothed into his normal stoicism quickly. He stepped in front of her. 

“Look into my eyes,” he said smoothly. 

She did.

“Sookie,” he said in his double voice, “Can you feel my influence?”

She felt something invasive, something deeply unpleasant, but also…

“It tickles,” she giggled, “But it’s not...influential.”

He looked shocked. “Sookie, this is very strange.”

She shook her head and took his hand to lead him forward again. “You don’t like being able to not control people do you?” she laughed. She was giddy. Spending time with a silent person like this was so nice. Being open and honest with someone was _so nice._ “It’s not a very attractive trait.”

He let her take the lead. “People are usually much more squeamish about vampires than you are.”

She smiled over her shoulder. “People are usually much more squeamish about glowing telepaths than you are.”

He hummed.

“The telepath thing doesn’t bother you because I can’t hear your mind anyway” she said thoughtfully, “Why doesn’t the glowing?”

“I like the glowing,” he said quietly. She turned to face him and saw a look she couldn’t interpret. “It’s like...getting a glimpse of sunlight…”

Her eyes widened for a moment, then she laughed. “Wouldn’t that be a bad thing?”

“Only if it burned,” he said soberly. Sookie processed that, but she didn’t think she had enough information to grasp the significance he put on it.

He changed the subject.

“You mentioned your grandmother and your brother, but what of your parents? How did they feel about glowing telepaths?” He asked curiously.

That was an unfortunate choice. “They died when I was young.”

There was silence while he contemplated that response. “I lost my wife and children,” he said eventually, trying to relate, “Everyone I knew from my human life. Most are buried here in this cemetery.”

“Oh Bill,” she said sadly. 

“Don’t,” he replied shortly. She tried not to.

Instead, she changed the subject. They spoke about general vampirism traits (some vampires could shape shift but he couldn’t), and then about her relationship with Gran and Jason. He was reluctant to talk about his personal life, both as a human and as a vampire, so she asked more questions about the practicalities of vampirism, (“They say it's a personal preference, but most choose to die for the day in coffins,” he said with a shrug.). 

She did get him to answer one personal question. “Why did you come here?” she asked. It had been bothering her. What kind of nocturnal creature would choose to live in a rural town? There was barely any nightlife to speak of in Bon Temps. Did he prefer to drive into a town at midnight and see it completely black and empty?

He hesitated. “For decades I’ve been a nomad,” he said quietly. “I’ve moved from town to town, country to country… vampires can’t stay in one place for long. Or rather, we couldn’t.” He turned to look at her, frowning. “Everything is changing so quickly now. I suppose...I want to try having a proper home,” he said slowly. “I want to build a life.” He seemed surprised.

When it was her turn again she talked about her relationship with the sky. It surprised her how much she enjoyed sharing the information. Tara already knew a lot of it, and the only reason she ever had to think on it was to consider the bad things she had done, the storms she had made or manipulated. 

“The moon is like a good friend,” she explained quietly, “The sun is more...like a force of nature, I guess.”

“The sun _is_ a force of nature,” he corrected with a small smile.

“Yes but...it doesn’t seem to have as much of a personality as the moon. I just...it's like an external organ. It charges my batteries but also it takes away bad energies I accumulate. Does that make sense?”

It didn’t. They moved on.

Eventually they reached old Jessie Compton’s house. “Is this where you live?” Sookie asked, looking at the run down house. She felt like she probably should have checked on Jessie Compton, though they had never had a relationship to speak of. Clearly he had been too frail to work on his house, and too alone to have anyone to do it for him. She couldn’t even sense any electrical wiring, though perhaps nothing was on. “What shape is it in?” 

“Pretty bad,” he admitted, “I’ve been doing what I can, but I need an electrician and a contractor. No one will take my calls at night. Or they think it's a prank.” He sounded frustrated.

“Do you need some help? I could make a few calls tomorrow,” Sookie offered. “I could come by after work and tell you who to contact.”

“That would be helpful,” he said, apparently surprised. “You’d be willing to do that for a vampire?”

She thought they were past that. She hummed. “You _did_ save my life,” she smiled, “Besides, I like being with you.” She turned away so he wouldn’t see her blush. She nestled into his void. It kind of felt like she was hugging him.

“I like being with you too,” he said gently. She looked up in surprise, she hadn’t expected him to open up. “It’s...relaxing to be with you. You’re a human I don’t have to have any pretenses with. It’s...it’s nice.”

She looked at him dreamily. He stepped closer. “Take the clip out of your hair,” he said quietly. She did. Her hair fell around her in locks. He gently reached forward and combed it out with her fingers. His eyes were half lidded. He leaned forward. “May I?” he asked politely. She swallowed, then nodded. 

He put his nose against her cheek, then followed it down to her chin and then her throat. She arched automatically. Her nerves fired spectacularly in ways they never had before. “I can smell the sunlight on your skin,” he breathed. He made his way back to her mouth. 

It felt like her first kiss. It was certainly her first kiss that she experienced inside her own head. It was nice, she thought, when he nipped at her lower lip, and it was nice when his tongue entered her mouth. It was nice when she experimentally pushed her tongue into his. It was nice when she forced herself to stop thinking, had she ever done that before? It was nice to relax and let her body feel what it felt.

It was nice, but it was also a lot.

She pulled back, hesitantly but firmly. He nodded as they separated. He looked dazed. His fangs were slightly extended. “Let me see you home,” he said. She nodded and took his arm. 

He walked her until they could see the house, then he kissed her cheek and disappeared. When Sookie got to the porch she was surprised to see that Tara was up and waiting for her, sipping a beer and thinking. Sookie’s shields were down, so she could hear what was on Tara’s mind, but she was still too relaxed to worry about raising them up. Besides, Tara wasn’t aggressive right now. She was just kind of sad. She knew she had no business trying to control this situation, but she felt like she was watching a car roll down the hill and waiting for it to crash.

“It’s fucked up that he enslaved people,” Tara said simply.

Sookie sighed. “I know.” She came to sit next to Tara 

“But it’s not a deal breaker,” Tara said matter of factly. 

Sookie didn’t really know where to begin with that one. She fiddled with the hem on her skirt. 

“I think slavery is one in a long list of things he did,” she said quietly.

There was a long pause while Tara processed what she said. “And _that’s_ not a deal breaker,” she said incredulously.

Sookie hummed. “I have my own list of things I’ve done,” she whispered.

“You cannot possibly be comparing yourself -”

“I think that if I had lived as long as Bill I would have a much longer list,” Sookie sighed. “I think that if I had to survive off of blood that my list would be even worse. And I think that he’s changed...or that he wants to anyway.” Tara thought that was naive, but Sookie ignored her, “And I think it felt nice to hold someone’s hand,” she finished.

There wasn’t much Tara could say to that, but she thought plenty. _Is she really_ that _desperate…_

 _Yes,_ Sookie thought in response. “Tara, I’m going forward with this with or without your blessing,” she said quietly.

It wasn’t aggressive, but Sookie taking charge like this was very new to the two of them. They had fights, sometimes they had fights over Tara being controlling, but especially in recent years a lot of that died down. Sookie had needed Tara as an anchor, she needed someone who’s head she trusted because she was in too many heads at once. She genuinely couldn’t think for herself sometimes, and so she relied on Tara to do it for her. Only, that hadn’t been as true in her adulthood as it had been during her adolescence. She had developed shields. She had gone off to visit her magical friends on her own and had known enough not to get herself involved in too many dangerous situations. She felt like she was in stasis sometimes, never changing but always aging. Sometimes she worried that she dragged Tara back with her. 

Tara was unhappy. “You don’t have my blessing, because this is stupid, and you know it’s stupid,” she said. They weren't fighting though. That was nice. She got up and walked to her car. “See you on Saturday.” The next time they were working together. 

Maybe she could have it all, Sookie thought in good humor: an imperfect man, an imperfect friendship, and an imperfect mind. Maybe she could even learn to live something like an imperfect normal life.


	6. The Party

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bill has a few people over.

Sookie and Dawn had never really been friends. 

It wasn’t really anyone’s fault. They weren’t exactly two peas in a pod. Sookie was shy, reclusive, and put people off for no easily articulable reason. Dawn was admired for her charm and attraction and broadly well-liked. She had a lot in common with Jason, in that way at least, and part of their distance was Dawn’s on again, off again dalliance with her brother. She had never seen a great benefit in the idea of becoming close to Jason’s relatives, and Sookie could hardly blame her for it. 

Another part was Tara’s blind rage about her and Jason’s whatever. Tara’s infatuation with Jason had started when they were children and had never died down in intensity. Sookie had thought it was weird when they were children, funny when they were teens, and downright unsettling now that they were adults. It was starting to look an awful lot like…no...it probably wasn’t that bad. 

In any case she would never have felt comfortable approaching Dawn to be friends. Dawn rarely thought of Sookie anyway. When she did she was generally charitable towards Sookie’s strangeness, but Sookie just felt too  _ other  _ for more than charity. Sookie understood, almost everyone felt that way around her, and she was just grateful that Dawn didn’t take her reflexive discomfort out on Sookie, even in her thoughts.

At this moment, however, Sookie found herself regretting that they weren’t closer. 

Dawn’s grandfather was a member of the Descendants of the Glorious Dead, and it seemed Gran had been busy making the rounds this morning. Dawn heard from a phone call before she came to work. There was a vampire in Bon Temps, living at the old Compton house. Apparently he’s an ancestor of old Jessie Compton, can you believe it? He fought in the war, and Adele Stackhouse invited him to come talk to our group about it. Isn’t that something? Can you imagine?

Dawn was struggling to. The problem was that she, like many healthy people in their twenties, had gone to a vampire club out of sheer curiosity, and what she found had been completely unlike what this Bill Compton was trying to sell. She had seen Bill Compton, she had watched when Sookie Stackhouse went over to take his order and he held her hand. He had been dressed in normal clothes, spoke politely, and wouldn’t have seemed completely out of place had the rest of the bar not been shamelessly staring (herself included). 

The vampires in Shreveport had been completely different, she thought, and Sookie was fascinated.

Sookie wanted to come over and pick her brain about these other vampires. She tried to come up with an opener which wouldn’t be too conspicuous, but failed completely. There was simply no reason for her to know that Dawn had met a vampire. So instead she kept her distance and watched Dawn’s mind like it was a television show. 

Dawn had gone to the bar a few times, it seemed like. Possibly at least one time with a date. Sookie wasn’t able to really get a complete picture of the narrative, she had to go by Dawn's fleeting and unfocused thoughts in the moment. Apparently those vampires had really liked black. They didn’t harass the humans at the bar by any means, but they weren’t terribly shy about their lust for blood...or for sex. They didn’t try to blend into the crowd, as Bill Compton had, if anything they enjoyed being known as vampires. One had even sat on a throne. It should have been ridiculous, but he was such a magnificently grandiose specimen of a creature that it was taken both by the vampires and by the humans as a given that the throne was his place. He was much more personable up close, she recalled. There had been a mutual attraction and she had gone back to his office with him. She hadn’t even noticed when he bit her, she was so lost in ecstasy. It had been the best sex she had ever had in her life - 

Sookie sheltered behind her shields and let Dawn have a moment of privacy. “What would you like?” She asked Andy Bellfleur with a big smile. 

Andy glared at her.

_...you can hear me...I know… _

He was trying to think directly at her. He wasn’t very good at it. The only person who was good at speaking to Sookie telepathically was Tara and she had practiced a great deal over the years. 

“Need a minute to decide?” She asked with a broad smile.

_...yeah….guess I do… _

She could read his intentions louder than she could hear his more directed thoughts. He was trying to get her to slip up, to respond to something that he hadn’t actually said so he could catch her red handed. 

She patiently waited for his words.

“I could use a minute,” he muttered. 

She tried to keep her smile ordinarily crazy and not contemptuous, “No problem, I’ll be right back with some water.”

Luckily it was a slow day, as days usually were at Merlotte’s. She picked up some food at the kitchen, Terry was cooking today, and brought it to a family at a booth. She took a peek at Dawn, but she was trying to multitask chatting with Sam while still thinking about her encounter with the vampire. It had only happened once, but she had been extremely impressed, apparently. As she peaked she heard Andy trying to get her attention, but again he was trying to get her to slip up and respond to his mind while he was still pretending to read the menu he knew front to back.

She wondered if, when she returned with his water, he would take it as evidence as opposed to her only being able to wait so long before doing her job. 

Sam had also heard about Bill’s meeting with the glorious dead’s descendents, and since Merlott’es was practically empty she got to hear about it. He was disturbed by how easily people were taking to a vampire. He thought that the American Vampire League, the social justice group committed to fighting for the civil liberties of vampires, were doing too good of a job if even rural Bon Temps was jumping on the undead bandwagon. Sookie bristled when he thought about how easy Bill’s life must be now. She could hear what people were thinking about Bill. She could hear what people were thinking about  _ her  _ for associating with Bill. Furthermore, she was a bit surprised to hear him assigning so much blame to the AVL. She had never thought much about them herself, but he seemed to think that they were running some kind of...brainwashing propaganda machine (his words). He had a very intense anger for this group that, as far as she could tell, just wanted their people to be treated the same as everyone else. She didn’t think she had ever seen Sam this mad in all the time she had known him.

She brought Andy his freaking water.

_ See! There! No, she was probably going to come back anyway… _

“Know what you want?” she asked cheerfully.

He didn’t look her in the eyes. “Still working on it.”

“Really? Andy, are you planning on trying something new?” She made her eyes as innocent as she dared. They both knew he only ever ordered the cheeseburger with fries. They both knew that he wasn’t planning on changing that even if it could lead to the revelation of her secret.

“Maybe,” he grumbled, “Just give me another minute to decide.”

“No problem, just wave me over when you’re ready.” They also both knew that he wasn’t going to tip well after all of this.

She hung out in back and listened in on Dawn again. She had moved back to why she found this whole business with Bill so strange. He didn’t wear black. He didn’t seem like the type to pop out his fangs at the request of someone fluttering their eyelashes. He took Sookie’s hand. The vampires at Shreveport, for how open they were about sexuality, did not touch unless something was going down (Sookie assumed this meant sex). Even the tall blond had been uninterested in taking her hand to lead her to her office. So...which was the true face of vampire? Was it the facade at the bar where the vampires acted like a fantasy? Or was that just a tourist trap? Did all vampires go home after a hard night of work and act like Bill Compton?

Sookie thought Dawn was being just a bit speciesist. She was expecting all of the members of this minority group to act the same. Bill was his own man, he could do what he wanted and act how he wanted. Besides, was that really what people fantasized about when it came to vampires?

To be fair, while Sookie was a telepath her social life was very limited. She hadn't even realized there was a vampire bar in Shreveport. To think! She had spent all this time debating whether or not to go to New Orleans and she probably could have just asked Lafayette to take her to Shreveport. 

No matter. She had met her vampire, and she was even seeing him again tonight. She had already made her phone calls and she was ready.

Dawn saw Sookie looking at her and felt embarrassed. She had left Jason tied to her bed -

That was enough of Dawn.

Andy tried tricking her by imagining that he was waving at her. There were just so many different reasons why that wouldn’t have worked, but just for the sake of moving this along she lowered her shields enough that she would sense when the electrical impulses in his brain compelled his head to turn to her and his arm to wave. When he had finally done so she looked up as if she just so happened to see him in that moment. He knew it was suspicious, but he already knew what he knew. She wasn’t exactly sure what all this was supposed to accomplish, and she suspected Andy hadn’t thought it through that far even away from her. 

As she suspected, when he finally had enough with their game of cat and mouse, he did not tip well.

It was summer, so when her shift ended at five she still had several hours of Louisiana sunlight left. She decided to drive home and go for a short hike on the Stackhouse land. Hikes were a favorite pastime of hers. She loved the smell of the woods, the sound of the earth beneath her feet, but most importantly the silence. Hikes were an opportunity to let her shields down and her mind rest. She let her mind wander to Gran, who was happy planning her meeting, to Jason who she didn’t expect to hear from any time soon, to Lafayette who was preoccupied these days with money, to Tara who was preoccupied these days with Sookie, to Bill. Bill, the man who had been so sweet with her last night. The man she had kissed! She let herself get caught up in thoughts of him and their evening. She was so lost in thought that she didn’t think about where she was going until she realized that she wasn’t as alone out here as she thought.

“...Bright...thing...” the oak tree vibrated in surprise. Sookie looked up at their trunk. To a human they just looked like another tree, if a particularly old one. Sookie learned her lesson about this as a child when she tried to get her cousin Hadley to stop picking on her by showing her this very tree. Hadley had been accusing her of lying for attention, so she had thought to introduce them. The oak wouldn’t just reveal themselves to anyone, however, and so the teasing had intensified. Sookie tried not to hold a grudge. 

“Hey,” she said warmly. She lifted her hand with a glow and the dryad reached out to touch it. The wood spirits didn’t have names, at least, not ones that they remembered. “How have you been?” 

The tree rustled in greeting. They hadn’t spoken words in some time, maybe not since last time Sookie came to visit. 

Sookie hummed in response. Something was off, she realized. She couldn’t hear the thoughts of the wood spirits, not like she could with humans, but she could feel the movement of their minds and she could generally tell how they were feeling. They seemed to take it for granted, or were never judgemental of it in any case. Dryads spoke so slowly that they used it to help them communicate. “Is something wrong?”

The tree thought for a long moment about how to answer that. “...Change…” they finally decided to say. They weren’t thrilled.

Sookie thought for a moment. “Is this about the vampires?” she asked doubtfully. Was the Great Revelation so great to the ones already in the know? The naiad before seemed to simply find it amusing. The spirits of the woods were cut off from human affairs, and at most took a very mild interest at best.

The oak was a little surprised. “...Vamp……… dead...men...?”

Sookie sighed. She wasn’t sure how she felt about the insistence that vampires were dead. The experts on TV had scrambled to come up with scientific explanations which still couldn’t be backed with a whole lot of evidence. Sookie supposed it was just a matter of time though, a thought which she welcomed gladly. If normal people knew how much magic was stuffed into every nook and cranny of the world, they might get off their butts and finally start to study it. Then magic would turn to scientific fact and become part of the material world in a way that was manipulatable. Then, maybe, she could be fixed.

She sensed that was the wrong approach to take with the tree. “The vampires came out of...well they told the humans about themselves. They now live openly among humans.”

The tree considered this. “...This…is...new...?” 

Sookie smiled. “This isn’t the change you were referring to?” Trees talked far too slowly to go on tangents. 

“...No...but…” the dryad was full of disdain. “...Stay...away…”

“From vampires?” Sookie clarified, “Why?”

Sookie could sense that the tree had a lot to say on the matter, but thankfully they tried to keep it short. “...They...cannot...help...them...selves…”

Short but vague. Sookie checked her phone. “I’m sorry, but I have to go.” Go home to shower and change so that she could completely disregard this advice. It would be impolite to say that, though. “It was lovely seeing you.”

As she turned, branches curled around her wrist and forced her to stop. She looked back at the oak in surprise. The prolonged touch made the mad buzzing of the old tree’s mind more intense and she put her shield up for protection. 

“Is this about...dead men?” she asked quietly.

She could sense that it wasn’t as the words came out of her mouth.

“...Change…” there was a significance to that word that she was missing. “...always…change...”

“Sure,” she agreed.

“...Grow...fast...”

That was odd. 

“...kin...are...strangers…”

She frowned. “This is about Jason? Do you even know Jason?”

The tree was frustrated. Bursting at the seams with information, but unable to communicate it well. For a long time it tried to figure out how to remedy this issue, but eventually it became resigned and let go of her wrist. 

“...Be….safe….bright….thing…” Sookie waited for more, but none came. She eventually left, having sensed that the tree had lapsed back into itself. 

She tried to process what had happened on the way home. The urgency of the encounter surprised her more than anything else - trees were sometimes impassioned, but rarely were they anxious. It was extremely odd, perhaps even concerning to have an inconsistent dryad. This one hadn’t acted differently in the time since they had met.

She got home by sunset, and by the time she finished getting ready it was dark. She got in her car and drove to the Compton house. It took maybe five minutes. 

The “grow fast” comment was one she would have to ponder as well. When she was a child the tree would call her a “seedling” and tell her to “grow tall” or “grow strong” or even “grow wide.” They hadn’t told her to grow in anyway recently, but even if they had, trees just didn’t do anything fast. Was there some kind of impending doom awaiting them all? Was it an apocalypse? Something just coming for her? And, most importantly, was it all Jason’s fault?

As she turned into Bill’s driveway she noticed a second car. She supposed the idea of Bill having a second car wasn’t outrageous. One was a red Lincoln Continental decorated with several stickers; One said VAMPIRES SUCK, and another HONK IF YOU’RE A BLOOD DONOR! The license plate read FANGS1.

She hadn’t put her shields up yet, but she hadn’t been looking for anything before. Now she reached out into the old, dilapidated house. She had rarely honed her senses like this before, but she was pretty sure she could sense multiple voids, and at least one human mind buzzing among them. She reached the door and lifted her arm to knock, but paused, at a loss. She hadn’t expected him to have company, and despite herself she was nervous about the prospect of meeting new vampires.

But that was absurd, she decided. Hadn’t she given her brother Tara enough grief for their anti-vampire attitudes? Hadn’t she been criticising Dawn’s private thoughts for her own views on the essential nature of vampires?

Although, if these vampires acted more like Dawn’s vampires than Bill…

Before she came to a decision the door opened on its own.

“Hey, little human chick,” the vampire purred.

She was clad only in a man’s button up shirt.

Sookie blinked.

“Hi!” she said with an overly bright smile (at least she didn’t have to see how she looked through the vampire’s eyes), “I was supposed to drop by tonight and give Bill some information on electricians. Is he here?” 

She could sense the movement with her mind before another void appeared behind her. “Is that so,” a man spoke in her ear. She wasn’t sure, but she thought he had come around from the back. He was bald with tattoos on the back of his head and his fangs already extended. And he was standing far too close. “She smells amazing,” he said with bright eyes.

Another flash of movement and when she looked up another vampire had appeared, peering at Sookie over the woman’s shoulder. “Indeed,” he agreed, “Maybe you ought to come inside.” It was odd, Sookie thought, how the words didn’t slur as his fangs extended. The woman’s were out too in anticipatory delite. Sookie felt multiple fingers poking at her brain.

Before she considered the wisdom of her words, she blurted. “Glamour doesn’t work on me.”

All three vampires became very still.

“Why not?” said the one behind her. 

She turned to him. He was pouting like a toddler whose toy had been taken away.

“I don’t know,” back to what was important, “Is Bill here?”

The man in the doorway narrowed his eyes. The woman leaned in closer to Sookie, then froze. She turned her head back into the house, listening for something that Sookie couldn’t hear. She scowled, “Fuck him.”

The man rolled his eyes, “You have.”

Sookie kept her face completely frozen.

They stepped aside, giving her the room to walk in. As she passed the woman she inhaled deeply. Sookie was fairly certain that was the first time she had seen a vampire breathe. 

Bill was in the corner. He watched Sookie come in with expressionless eyes. The inside of his house looked about the same as the outside - it wasn’t quite falling apart, but it definitely needed a new coat of paint. The furniture inside was rustic, and the humans lounging on the couch felt out of place. One was a beautiful young man clad only in boxers and eyeliner. The other was a woman nearing forty in skimpy clothing and far too much makeup. They looked at Sookie as she entered. Their minds were particularly prominent against the vampires’ voids, like splotches of paint on a white background.

_ Vampire bait... _ The man thought cynically.

_ Sookie…? Huh...  _ Sookie paid closer attention to the woman, but couldn’t place her. She lifted her shields firmly, but she found that she was so nervous that they didn’t do much good. 

The three who greeted her followed her closely. Sookie looked to Bill for guidance, but he looked impassive. She thought about the kiss. The one that had been nice.

“Where’d you find this?” the female vampire asked. She sounded bemused. She leaned in close to Sookie’s neck. Sookie tried not to flinch, but couldn’t help it when the tattooed one appeared right in front of her face. 

“She smells….” he seemed frustrated.

“Like sunlite,” the other man offered casually, as if it were no big deal. He was tall, with rippling black hair and a cool exterior to match Bill, who he now turned to as the man on the couch grabbed him affectionately by the middle. “And to think, just five minutes ago you were telling us how you were living mainly on synthetic blood. You big poser.” The human began rubbing the vampire’s crotch. Sookie could feel the growing hardness in his hands.

“I don’t know Malcolm,” if the woman came any closer she and Sookie would be touching, “She looks like a virgin to me.”

Sookie didn’t think they were talking about sex.

_ None of your fucking business.  _ “If you’ll excuse Bill and me a minute,” she said instead. Her voice sounded oddly normal and polite. If she could just talk to Bill she might know what to do. 

She was ignored.

Malcolm, still getting a hand job scrutinized her with heated eyes. Sookie felt naked. “There is something special about this one. Ah…” he grunted. He began rocking into the human’s hands.

“Maybe she has rich blood,” the tattooed one said with a laugh and pressed himself against Sookie. “I’m getting hard just thinking about it.”

Indeed, he had. 

Sookie needed air. She needed space. In a panic she considered if she had it in her to fight three vampires. She remembered the Rattray’s trailer. She didn’t think she had it in her to fight one. Would Bill speak up before she had to fight them off? She wanted to cry.

She wanted to burn more. 

Before she acted, the human woman spoke up. “Aw, that’s just crazy Sookie Stackhouse.”

Sookie’s eyes snapped to her. She saw herself in the woman’s memories and realized she was Janella Lennox. She had worked at Merlotte’s briefly, before moving to Monroe. Huh.

“Crazy,” the tattooed one sounded delighted. His erection grew. 

The woman put her nose up against Sookie’s neck.

Suddenly Bill rose, startling all the humans. Sookie felt a flood of relief. 

“ _ Sookie is mine _ ,” he snarled at the others.

The vampires stiffened. 

Sookie blinked.  _ Sookie is what now? _

Malcolm reacted first. “Well then, I guess you better back off, Diane, Liam.” 

Diane straightened. Liam stepped away with a sigh. “Well,  _ someone  _ needs to get down on my junk.” He blurred over to the human woman who, as if it were a reflex, unzipped his pants and immediately did just that. Sookie didn’t watch, but she still felt the hardened cock going down Janella’s throat. She focused on trying to lift her shields.

“It’s nice having pets, isn’t it,” Malcolm said to Bill, “Convenient. That’s why I always bring Jerry with me.” Jerry was now rubbing against him and kissing his neck. 

Diane narrowed her eyes at Bill. “He’s never been the type before.”

The vampire encouraged Jerry to continue with a gentle brush of his hair, “Maybe that’s what synthetic blood does to you.” Janella and Liam were still going at it.

Sookie needed out. Away. This was all supposed to be private, what they were doing to each other. She wanted no part in it and, evidentially, it might be imposed on her if she stayed. 

Diane noticed her distress. “Aw, she’s innocent.” She caressed Sookie’s cheek and it took everything within Sookie not to create the space she craved with fire. She couldn’t fight a vampire, she reminded herself. She couldn’t…

“She’s mine,” Bill repeated, his voice low. Sookie wondered if he saw her distress. She wondered if he cared. 

“Yeah, yeah, we got it.” She sounded irritable. Diane leaned low and whispered in her ear, “Not taking very good care of your master, though, are you?”

Bill snarled. It was an animalistic noise, not something one would hear from a human man.

Sookie remembered the trailer. She remembered holding his hand under the moonlight.

“What? You look tired and droopy,” Diane pouted.

“You’re welcome to have some of Jerry,” Malcolm offered eagerly. Sookie wondered what was so great about Jerry. Jerry stopped his ministrations and turned to Bill.

Jerry started kissing up Bill’s neck. Why would they offer Jerry to Bill when Bill was straight? But Bill was clearly struggling. Diane was right about his health, apparently, or perhaps Sookie was just wrong about his orientation. She wouldn’t know. She hadn’t asked. Jerry rubbed his hands on Bill’s chest. Bill looked at Sookie hopelessly, but couldn’t prevent his fangs from extending. 

Sookie looked away. It was too much.

Even looking away, her shields were paper thin now. She could see Bill through Jerry’s eyes, see his hunger and lust. He was one of them. One of the undead fucking monsters that Marcus had become addicted to until it had killed him. He was impatient.  _ Just bite me,  _ he tried to pull Bill’s head down.  _ You’ll be too sick to move for a year. Come on, get a taste of Hep D you fucker- _

“Stop!” Sookie cried right before Bill succame, “He has Hep D!” 

Everyone in the room stiffened. 

“What is Hep -”

Jerry vaulted at her. She felt Jerry’s intention as she felt his fingers around her throat. His thoughts intensified as his fingers squeezed.

_ Fucking bitch!  _ The blond woman lifted her hands to his wrist.  _ How does she know? I didn’t… _

A violent pain ripped through Jerry’s mind as she burned him. He let her go to clutch his arm to him and she collapsed on the floor. Bill was over her in an instant and threw Jerry away from her.

Sookie’s mind exploded with movement, and before she even tried to move Jerry was on the floor beneath Diane’s heel. She didn’t have to listen to him for long though. Bill gently cradled her head and stroked her neck and she welcomed the comfort of oblivion. 

Malcolm, the leader, no doubt, said calmly, “Well, this has all been very...illuminating. But we’ve got a long ride back to Monroe and I’m sure we’ll all want to have a little talk with Jerry...when he wakes up.”

Sooke heard and felt the movement, but she chose to only look into Bill’s eyes, so she didn’t know what they were doing with Jerry. She heard a shudder from Liam and guessed how that ended. Had they just continued during…?

“Out, Janella, we’re being evicted,” he said casually. She felt them getting up to move. She felt another presence move over her and Diane’s face wormed its unwelcome way into her field of vision. 

“Isn’t anyone even the slightest bit interested in how this little bitch knew about Jerry?” 

She felt the pausing bodies in the doorway.

“You can’t speak yet, can you sweetheart?” Bill asked gently. His eyes were insistent.

Diane tried to push him out of the way. “I have ways of making her talk.”

“You forget…” Bill said quietly.

“Yeah, yeah, she’s yours...Whatever.”

“Jerry,” the leader sounded mildly dissapointed, “You stupid bitch. Nobody fucks with me and gets away with it.” It sounded like he was scolding Jerry for sneaking a cookie.

The door slammed shut behind them and a car drove away. Suddenly there was no need for Bill’s protection. He continued to hold her head but she pushed him away gently. There was to be no more touching tonight.

Bill’s face was unreadable as he moved away from her. “I’m sorry you had to witness that. Their visit was unexpected.”

Sookie nodded. “What’s Hep D?”

“Hepatitis D is a mutation, relatively harmless to humans. It’s the only blood-borne pathogen to which we are susceptible.” His voice sounded cool and detached. “Malcolm must be furious.”

Malcolm would surely take that anger out on someone.

“And it makes you sick for a year?”

“...No,” he said in dark amusement, “It only makes us weak for about a month or so. The bigger danger to us is being captured and staked during that time.” He eyed her. “I assume Jerry was misinformed. We keep it out of the media.”

“Right, you don’t want your weaknesses to be public knowledge.” Her voice sounded sarcastic, but she was drowning in defeat. What did the public even actually know about vampires?

“Precisely,” he seemed satisfied that she had gotten it. 

“I don’t suppose they’re taking Jerry to the police,” Sookie whispered.

Bill was silent. 

Sookie rose as she thought about it. Her neck felt sore. 

Bill appeared in front of her, his eyes pleading, “If they did the police wouldn’t do anything about it. You know that.”

That was probably true, but why did she feel so terrible?

She shook her head, she needed to not think about Jerry’s fate. “And what the hell did you mean…’Sookie is mine-’”

“I was communicating to the others that you were my human, and therefore I was the only one who could feed on you,” he explained hastily.

“You most certainly cannot feed on me!”

“Of course I can’t,” he sounded exasperated, “but had they known that they’d have considered you fair game.”

Sookie was incredulous. “Without-” she stopped herself. She was about to say “without my consent.” She realized how dumb that would have sounded. How naive. Was she completely useless without her telepathy?

Bill seemed to understand where she was going with it, however. He became grave. “Sookie, our existence has always been seducing and taking. Synthetic blood...it's a marvel, but cultural change isn’t going to happen over night.”

_...Change... _

This wasn’t what the tree was talking about, though.

“With the way you smell...if I hadn’t said that they would have attacked you. I would fight them, but it would be three against one, and Malcolm is much older than I am.”

How many arguments had she had with Tara over vampires? Tara truly thought of them as demons who existed to kill people. Sookie had always insisted that everything was different now that True Blood existed. How had she even come to that conclusion? 

“They said you were mostly living off of True Blood,” she said quietly.

“Yes,” Bill nodded, relieved that she remembered. She was questioning the “mostly.” Diane seemed to think True Blood wasn’t enough to satisfy him.

Diane, who had been clad only in a man’s shirt.

“You and Diane used to date?” She sounded accusatory.

Bill hedged. “We...had sex once.”

She wasn’t sure why that hurt. She didn’t think it was fair of her, but it was the first time she felt a pang of jealousy. She had known that he had had sex, enough to produce children, even. This was more immediate though. She wanted to ask if he had slept with her tonight. She wanted to demand details. She wanted to criticize him for sleeping with a woman who would attack a stranger and wouldn’t ask for a human’s consent. 

She needed to go now.

“Here,” she found the folder on the ground. “Contact info for two electrical contractors. They’re willing to come out at night and give you quotes.”

Bill was surprised. “Thank you.”

“I have to go.” She had barely taken two steps when he blurred in front of her. “May I kiss you goodnight?” His eyes were earnest. He wasn’t touching her at least.

“ _ No,”  _ she moved around him, “I couldn’t stand it after them.” 

She swore she could feel his eyes on her as she left the house and as she got into her car. She drove before she even tried to process it all.

She wanted to scream.

She wanted to burn.

She wanted to explode.

She wanted to hide.

She wanted to hide.

She wanted to hide in a closet and cloak herself in darkness. To take comfort in the feeling of the soft fabric around her. To cover her ears as if that would help keep the voice out of her head, the one that was trying to engage with other things, but couldn’t stop thinking about wanting her. To not be found until Uncle Bartlett decided to give up and go home.

She just managed to pull into her driveway before the sobs made it too difficult to see.

A few days later Sookie still hadn’t decided what to do about Bill. Did she forgive this? He hadn’t actually done anything wrong, afterall. She had liked him, she thought. Without him, she had only the silence of the woods, and she had kept out of those since her strange encounter with the dryad. Whatever she decided, she thought she should do it soon. His presentation to the Descendants of the Glorious Dead was coming up, and she should know -

She was interrupted from her musings by the ringing of her cell phone. She always forgot to put it on Do Not Disturb mode when she was sunbathing. She checked the caller ID and groaned.

She greeted her boss cordially. “Hello?”

“Hey, Sookie, could you do me a favor?”

“Um…maybe.”

“Listen, I’m set to open for lunch in about 20 minutes and Dawn still hasn’t shown up for her shift.”

Nope. “I really need my day off Sam,” she said gently but firmly.

“No! I’m not asking you to come in. I just need you to run by Dawn’s and wake her up. She probably just overslept.”

The burden of living and working in a small town was that everyone knew everyone else. Plus it wasn’t like Sam could do it himself while he was prepping for opening. “Sure,” Sookie sighed. It wasn’t too far away. She started gathering herself together. 

“Thanks Sookie!” The relief in Sam’s voice was palpable that Sookie forgave herself for her people pleasing. Then she remembered that she had to move from her spot.

Dawn’s house was a small rental. Actually, her landlord was Sam. That must be an odd dynamic. Sookie walked up to the door and knocked. “Dawn...it’s Sookie. Honey, you overslept.”

There was no response. Sookie tried the doorknob and found it unlocked. 

“Dawn,” she called, letting herself in. Still no response, and the house felt empty. Sookie let down her shields. She felt Dawn’s neighbor, but no Dawn. Her alarm clock was going off. She must’ve spent the night at Jason’s, Sookie thought with a sigh. Assuming, of course, that Dawn and Jason hadn’t fizzled out yet. She would probably have to try there next. Sookie walked into the bedroom to turn off the alarm. 

Dawn was lying in bed, her eyes open, her face pale. Her neck was black with bruises. A fly was crawling on her face. There was no mind buzzing, no electrical nerve impulses, everything was silent and still, but there was no void either. There was no Dawn.

Sookie fell to her knees. This was not her first dead body. She screamed anyway.


	7. Victims/ The Victims

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The police investigate a murder.

_ Would you look at those feet… _ Mike Spencer thought as he waited on the side.

Sookie moved on to Andy Bellefleur.

_...pissing me off...everyone calls Bud “sheriff,” but I’m “Andy”...When am I gonna get the respect… _

“Sookie?”

Sookie struggled for a moment to find her barings. She felt numb, and in her numbness she decided to float - to unshield herself completely and put up no resistance to the deluge of minds which swept her off to sea. She didn’t want to be in her own mind right now, in her own body which was trembling in spite of herself, but Sheriff Dearborn was addressing her directly so she was no longer able to indulge in her ability to be someone else. She found the weight of her own body in one of Dawn’s cheap chairs, heard the busy noises of the investigation around her through her own ears, and saw Dearborne’s pity-filled expression through her own eyes. She shielded the others out, but Dearborne was close enough that she saw how she looked through his eyes. She probably should have been offended. She probably should have been something, anything.

“Sorry, what was the question?” she asked quietly.

_ Poor thing is in shock…  _ “Sookie,” he said gently, “I realize you’ve been through a lot and you’re scared.”  _ Not scared of the right thing mind you.  _ Dearborne was starting to lean towards the theory that all this was Bill’s doing. “But I need you to try and remember. When you got here, was the door open or just unlocked?”

She had gotten here about a million years ago, but she humoured him anyway. Unlocked or open? She was pretty sure she had turned the knob and not just pushed the door in. “...Unlocked I think.”

She saw through his own eyes as he wrote “KILLER HAD KEY?” on his notepad. What was the significance of that? Her brain wasn’t working, so she couldn’t puzzle it out for herself.

Jason’s thoughts were particularly mangled at that. Jason had arrived shortly after Sookie. Jason had fought with Dawn the night before apparently, a fight which culminated with Dawn firing a gun in his general direction. Jason had come back with flowers and an apology. He twitching and fidgeting sitting on the couch. His thoughts were opache. His mind was wrapped in thorny vines - everywhere he turned he was struck but he was too restless to keep still. He thought of Dawn with affection and was hit by grief. He thought of her with contempt at having given her key to another man and was hit with jealousy. He thought of their last fight when she had the audacity to shoot at him and he was hit with rage. He thought of their last fight when he had been so stubborn that she had felt the need to pull a gun on him and felt remorse. He...

“Sookie!” Dearborne’s prodding was getting less gentle with impatience. 

She found herself again. “S-Sorry.”

Dearborne stayed calm with some struggle. “Is that the exact position you found her in?”

“Well,” she hesitated, “I covered her with a sheet but I don’t think I touched her.”

_ Evidence tampering.  _ “I wish you hadn’t done that.”

“Next time I find a friend of mine dead, I’ll try to remember that,” she said with more snark than she felt. At that moment Mike Spencer passed her thinking  _...fine pair of perfect, natural breasts. I’d have laid down money that they were fake. Well done, God. I guess not so well done, letting her die like that… _

A tickle at the edge of her consciousness surprised Sookie. She supposed Sam must’ve called Tara. It made her nervous. She didn’t need help right now, but if Tara felt that the police were being unjust to Sookie she might storm the police tape and make a scene.

Tara did not to her relief. She felt her come up to the tape, speak to an officer and then walk away. She reached out mentally to the officer she had spoken to, Kevin Prior. Kevin, a short, soft-spoken man knew that Tara and Sookie were close and had simply told Tara -

“ _ Sookie!”  _ Sookie’s eyes snapped to Dearborne’s. Right. Focus. 

* * *

Tara’s mother called. She canceled it.

When she parked her car and ran out she hadn’t taken much stock of who was around, but as she walked back now she saw Arlene Fowler watching from in front of her own yard with avid interest along with Hoyt Fortenberry, and Rene Lernier. She considered waiting closer to the crime scene. She and Arlene didn’t get along very well, she barely knew Hoyt at all, and Rene had always struck her as off in a creepy way - though Sookie always admonished her for that.

She sucked it up and walked back to her car. As she approached they looked up at her, hungry for information.

“They told me to wait for the sheriff to finish,” Tara rolled her eyes. 

Arlene eyed her disapprovingly. “Tara, honey, don’t you think that Sookie can talk to a man who’s known her for her whole life without your help?”

Tara narrowed her eyes, “I didn’t come to help her with the law, Arlene. I came to offer emotional support!” 

It wasn’t entirely true, but before Arlene could respond, Hoyt stepped in. “I don’t get it. She was so pretty!”

Tara huffed.

Arlene rubbed his arm sympathetically. “Well, maybe it was just her time…”

“ _ Just her time? _ ”

_ “You know what I meant Tara!” _

Rene shook his head. “She was only twenty-three,” he said darkly. “Ain’t no twenty-three-year-old in the world whose time has come.”

Tara saw someone approached and stifled a groan. 

“Hey, y’all,” Mrs. Fortenberry said with a wave of her fan, “What’d I miss?”

“Dawn’s dead, Mama,” Hoyt said solemnly. 

“I know, what a shame.” She shook her head without much sincerity. She nodded toward the house. “Who they got in there?”

Tara narrowed her eyes at Kevin Prior. There was only so long she could handle being in the presence of Maxine Fortenberry.

Arlene, on the other hand, was only too happy to join in on the gossip. “Jason and Sookie Stackhouse. She found the body, but it sounds like they think he might have done it.”

Tara’s head snapped up. “Well he didn’t!”

Hoyt nodded enthusiastically.

“Then who did?” Mrs. Fortenberry asked.

“I don’t know,” Arlene answered before Tara could say anything.

“Probably the same person who killed Maudette,” Hoyt said darkly. Tara was surprised. She hadn’t thought of Hoyt Fortenberry as being particularly astute, but he was probably right.

Another dark thought occurred to her as the others chatted away banally. If the person who murdered Maudette was the same person who murdered Dawn, then they were after women who had dated vampires. Would Sookie fall on their radar? She hadn’t exactly been quiet about her friendship with Bill Compton.

Tara saw Sookie step outside onto the porch. She sat on the stairs. Tara eagerly started to make her way away from the vultures when she saw Sam’s blue, boxy truck pull up. She hesitated as he got out and made straight for Sookie and mulled it over. She decided it made the most sense for her to hang back. 

She stomped back to the others. Arlene raised her eyebrow. 

“I don’t want to crowd her,” she explained defensively. 

Arlene looked at Sookie and Sam for a moment in confusion before she comprehended. “Oh,” she blinked, “Okay then.” After all, Arlene had been worried about Sookie and the vampire too.

Rene didn’t get it. “What? It’s just -”

Arlene cut him off, “I’ll explain later.” 

Rene kept his mouth shut.

“What are they doing?” Hoyt demanded.

Tara rolled her eyes, “They’re just -” but just as she looked up Jason’s small, distant head was slammed against the police car. Andy Bellefleur held him there as he opened the back door and shoved him inside. She couldn’t see Sookie’s face from this far away, but her little figure just watched without moving or getting up and demanding that they cease.

Mrs. Fortenberry began, “It looks like they’re arresting -”

“I know that, Mom _ ,”  _ Hoyt snapped, “I meant why?”

“They must have something on him,” Arlene said with curious, hungry eyes. Tara wanted to slap her.

Instead she watched in horror as Andy Bellefleur got in the car and drove off, taking Jason around the curve and away.

Sookie sat on the porch. Probably watching helplessly.

Tara hesitated. She looked at Sookie with Sam there to guard her, then at the road the police car disappeared down. Sookie would probably be fine. Jason though… She made her decision then, went back to her own, extremely beat up car, threw her phone in the passenger seat and turned on the ignition.

Her mother called again.

She ignored it.

* * *

“I’m sorry, cher,” Sam murmured as the van drove away.

Sookie needed a moment. It was too hard for her to find her words. Her throat wasn’t cooperating.

“He didn’t do it,” she said quietly.

She could feel the doubt in his mind before he nodded placatingly.

“I would know if he had done it,” she reminded him. She could still feel the doubt in his mind. “Not that it matters. Andy Bellefleur always had it out for Jason.”

Sam sighed, not willing to go into that. “I’m sorry you had to be the one to find her.”

Sookie shrugged. “It was gonna be somebody, right?”

“I guess.” He shook his head, “I tell you Sook, sometimes I don’t even recognize this world we’re living in.” 

Mike Spencer, who had been going in and out, stepped past them to go back in. Sam had to lean in closer to her and she felt the thrill in his system. She gently nudged him away. 

They were silent for a moment before he got back on track. “I mean, god dammit.” 

“Careful now,” Sookie reprimanded him. “God didn’t do this.”

He smiled at her warmly. He thought she was wonderful. Sweet and good and innocent. She repressed her reaction to that last one.

“You think maybe I should...shut down the bar for the day?”

“All that’d do is deny people a good, stiff drink on the day they could use it the most,” she said softly.

“Yeah, but -”

“Put me to work tonight,” her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes, “I know it’s my day off and all, but the last thing I need right now is time alone with my thoughts.” Or anyone else's, for that matter. Letting herself float wasn’t a good solution. She needed a task to keep herself busy. To keep herself from thinking of Dawn, or Jason, or her own problems.

Sam nodded. “Alright then, we’ll open.”

“Um...excuse me,” a young, timid man said from behind Dawn’s screen door.

Sam began to ask what he needed, but Sookie already knew and gently tugged on his shirt to get him to move away from the porch with her. He felt a rush of something but she chose to block him out. 

The man and Mike Spencer moved in coordination down the porch steps carrying the corpse between them. As they passed by Mike Spencer smiled genially and said “This is Neil Jones, my new apprentice.”

Neil nodded.

“He’s from Kentucky.”

“Hi,” said Neil.

“Uh...hi,” Sookie replied. They weren’t interested enough in her to pay attention to her face, so she didn’t know if she had successfully contorted her expression into a polite one. The corpse dangled between them.

They got to the van. “Don’t be too careful” Mike said to his apprentice, “You’re not going to hurt her.”

So Neil shifted his angle in such a way that one of Dawn’s body parts rammed into the door.

No dignity in death for Dawn, it seemed. 

* * *

Andy beat Tara to the station, but that was fine. Tara needed a minute behind the wheel of her car to reevaluate her decision. 

Tara tried to avoid the police like the plague, for a variety of reasons. She was a poor, black woman with a mother who had her fair share of run ins with the police. With these very police officers in fact! Now she was on the brink of going in and directly confronting a man with a badge who came into her workplace regularly. What was she doing? This was dangerous. This was stupid. What would possess her to do something like this?

Jason. Jason was in there. Scared...in shock...alone…

She had left her car in a blink and slammed the door behind her. She had a nervous feeling in the pit of her stomach. She walked it off.

* * *

As soon as Sookie stepped over the threshold Gran came over to her. 

_ Jason…  _ ”I heard,” she said. Her eyes were red but she was remarkably composed for her internal turmoil.

All Sookie wanted was to lie down. She was so exhausted.

“He didn’t do it,” Gran said with conviction. 

“I know.”

“Jason may be many things, but he’s not a murderer.”

“I know,” Sookie soothed.

“Sookie…” Gran shook her head. 

Sookie heard what she was trying to build up to and stared. She wouldn’t...

Gran proceeded. “In all the years that I’ve lived in Bon Temps, I can’t recall but...two, maybe three murders.” Sookie’s head was spinning. “Now there are two in one week. People are not going to stand for it.” 

Sookie felt like she should cut her off, maybe change the subject if she could. 

“If the police can’t find the person who did it, they’re gonna find Jason.” Gran looked at her urgently. “He needs your help.”

For all that Sookie longed to have her gift brought out into the open, to share her secrets and their weight with her family, she didn’t think she liked it being brought out like this. “And how am I supposed to do that, Gran,” she asked quietly.

Gran wasn’t going to beat around the bush. “You do what you need to do.” Gran looked her right in the eyes. “Listen in on people, keep your ears open. You’re bound to hear something.”

This was the closest they had ever come to speaking about it openly, and they still couldn’t quite do that much. Sookie was disappointed and relieved and bitter, for whatever reason, all at once. “Alright,” Sookie said nodding with a strained smile. 

Gran gave her a heavy look, “Sookie.”

“I’ll do what I can do.” 

She left the room and let her words hang in the air. She moved away fast enough that she couldn’t hear Gran’s reaction to her words, but she would have to think on them herself anyway. What  _ could _ she do?

She could nap, as her intention had been. She was so tired. Her mind briefly went to Tara. Where had Tara gone this morning?

She lay her head on her pillow and tried to sleep. She couldn’t. 

* * *

“Where should I drive you?” Tara asked in a thick voice.

Jason squirmed uncomfortably in the passenger seat beside her. Poor thing. He was pale and sweaty, and had a pained expression. Clearly  _ Detective  _ Bellefleur, shithead extraordinaire, had scared him half to death. They hadn’t even mirandized him when they slapped him in handcuffs. Fucking law enforcement.

“Home,” he replied. His voice sounded choked. Was he trying to hold back tears? 

Tara reached out to him to take his hand, but he flinched back.

“Sorry,” it sounded like a gasp. “Not now.”

She nodded. Seeing this, seeing how traumatized he was, it was enough to confirm for her that she did the right thing. That’s what she told herself as the knots of doubt in her stomach pulled tighter.

After a short drive which was silent beside the sound of his heavy breathing she drove into the dirt road driveway of the house he had lived in since he turned eighteen. The house Michelle and Corbett Stackhouse left him.

He left the car without acknowledging her. Tara felt a pang in seeing him go. She opened her mouth, but at the last second looked down, put the car in reverse, and buried the impulse to cover that pang with aggression.

“Tara,” Jason called unexpectedly. 

She looked up.

“Thanks,” he nodded.

She smiled, feeling warm all over, and nodded back.

* * *

Sookie could let her shields down more. Listen in on more people.

Could she, though? For one thing, being able to hear more thoughts was not the same as being able to listen to more people. A busy night at Merlotte’s with her shields down would knock her right out of her body and she would end up curled in a fetal position trying to regain her sense of self. Besides, she heard people plenty when they came too close. And so far none had been thinking about killing two girls whose only crime had been their choice of company. It wasn’t impossible per se, but it was a lot of effort for a dubious reward.

She could try to narrow down a list of subjects and pick through their brains. If she went too deep they would feel it, and if she went really deep it would hurt them. But wasn’t that a small price to pay for her brother’s freedom?

She didn’t think it was. There were moral implications to that which were beyond her reasoning skills to decipher, but even if she ignored that for the sake of her own, she had no suspects and no clear idea on how to get some. She could ask Dawn’s friends and family some questions, but she didn’t wear a badge, who would talk to her? And even if she just asked questions and ignored their denials with their mouths while she heard their responses in her head, who would she question? 

Well...maybe someone from that vampire bar in Shreveport, now that she thought about it. The one that Dawn went to repeatedly. Maybe Maudette had been there too. She ought to go to Shreveport and question the people there, maybe listen in for a killer in their midst. But could she?

She remembered an erection pressed against her back.

Sookie was feeling very wary of vampires since she had met more of them. It was speciesist of her to apply her disdain for Malcome, Diane and Liam to all vampire kind, but hadn’t Bill done just that? What had he said? Something about cultural change happening slowly? Something about this being normal vampire behavior that they would have to be trained out of? Something that made her question if she would be safe around others. Would she put herself at risk for Jason?

She heard Gran’s mind buzzing happily before she knocked on Sookie’s door and entered. She smiled in a restrained way. Sookie knew what was coming.

“They released Jason!” Gran said. 

They both knew it was only a matter of time though.

“That’s great Gran,” Sookie said instead.

Should she go to Shreveport to save her brother? Yes. Could she face the fear of sexual assault to do so? She didn’t know, but she could certainly spy on people at Merlotte’s and hope for the best. She owed her family that much.

Speaking of Merlotte’s; when Gran left she groped for her phone on the side table. 4:03, time to get ready for work. 

* * *

Tara watched Sookie with a frown.

Sookie was walking around with a spaced out look on her face and a slight frown. Sometimes she even closed her eyes as if she forgot to open them. When she waited tables she almost seemed normal but even from Tara’s standpoint behind the bar she could see that Sookie was more chatty today and sometimes stared at the customers for a little too long. A man grabbed her arm and instead of immediately retreating she allowed the contact for a moment, staring back at him with unfocused eyes. __ She then extracted herself from her drunk patron with a patience he didn’t deserve. 

Tara shook her head. 

Tara should be checking in with Sookie. Her best friend had found the dead body of their coworker earlier, and it didn’t seem like she was handling it well, but Tara didn’t want Sookie in her head right now. It was a reasonable response, Tara thought. She was in no way ashamed of her actions. Any of her actions. She simply didn’t want to add to Sookie’s already overburdened mind. It was her responsibility, as a good friend no less, to keep away.

Sookie went to the back, hopefully to regroup so she wasn’t on the floor when, to Tara’s dismay, the vampire Comton came into the bar. There were three waitresses tonight, but Sookie’s section was full and Charlsie was new and struggling to keep up with her current patrons, so Denny made the questionable decision to sit him at one of Arlene’s tables. This could be interesting.

Sam appeared next to her before anything good happened. Tara suddenly became very focused on cleaning a glass.

“Hey,” he said in a low voice, “Listen, we should probably talk.” He glanced around them. “About last night.”

He was bad at this. Tara’s eyes flickered up to see if Sooke was within shield distance. She wasn’t back on the floor yet. “What about last night?”

Sam sighed in exasperation. “You’re gonna make this hard on me, aren’t you?”

Tara rolled her eyes. What part of a one-night stand didn’t he understand? 

“Later,” she said firmly. She didn’t need this shit while she was working. 

Sam seemed frustrated, but at that moment Jane Bodehouse came through the door and Tara ignored Sam to step forward and prepare her cognac. Sam made himself scarce.

Arlene had arrived at the vampire’s table, which was close enough for Tara to hear.

“May I have a bottle of O Negative, please?” he said in his unnaturally cold voice.

“Um...A Negative’s all we got,” Arlene replied nervously. Tara frowned.

“A Negative then.” His voice had no inflection. “Pretty crowded tonight -”

Arlene turned her back on him and walked straight to the bar. 

“Sam just bought a case,” Tara informed her, “We got O Neg and A Neg, plenty of each.”

Arlene made a sour face. “Screw him. I’m giving him A. And don’t microwave it neither. He can have it cold.”

Tara grinned and shook her head. “You are so bad.” It was no skin off her nose after all. 

Tara got the bottle out of the fridge and opened it, but when she turned to give it to Arlene, Sookie had appeared at her side.

“Are we out of O?” Sookie asked coolly.

Arlene looked away uncomfortably. “Blood is blood, what difference does it make?”

“He prefers O.” Sookie was staring daggers. “I’ll take it to him if you like.”

Arlene frowned at Sookie. “Fine then, he gives me the creeps,” she said honestly. She didn’t walk away with her head held high, though.

Tara turned to dump the bottle down the sink (it wasn’t like another vampire was going to walk in any time soon). 

“You shouldn’t go along with her like that,” Sookie said irritably.

Tara looked up warily. “Well, he gives me the creeps too.” She got the bottle of O Neg out and when she looked up again Sookie was gone.

She was not being a shitty friend...Sookie would understand eventually.

As she turned to open the bottle, Jason came up to the bar and smiled at her. She put the blood down and started pouring his own mug from the beer nozzle. “Hey Tara.”

She averted her eyes shyly - looking at Jason’s smile was like looking directly into the sun. “Hey.”

“So I was thinking,” Jason began, “I wanted to thank you properly for today.”

“Oh, no need,” her voice sounded unnaturally demure. She put the mug in front of him.

“No!” he said eagerly, “I want to buy you a beer!”

Tara grinned and shook her head before sneaking a glance at him. He was looking at her expectantly.

“Wait...now?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Jason,” this was endearing, “I’m working.”

His grin fell as he realized his mistake. “Oh!” She smiled at him. “Another time then!” 

Without a second look he picked up his beer and walked to the pool table where Hoyt was waiting, only pausing to check out Charlsie’s as she took an order. 

Well, change only stuck when it was gradual, right?

She turned to put the bottle in the microwave and found Sam by the counter. 

“We need to talk,” he said insistently.

“I told you, later.”

“You’ll avoid me later.” He wasn’t wrong. 

She sighed and put the bottle in the microwave. “Listen, nothing happened last night,” she said in a low voice while she punched in the numbers. “And if anyone asks, you didn’t see me at all, OK?”

“I...what?”

The microwave lights turned on and Tara watched the bottle spin. “I’m telling people I spent the night with Jason.”

There was a brief pause. “Jason Stackhouse,” Sam asked incredulously.

Tara nodded. “I was with Jason Stackhouse last night, and if you say different, they’re gonna haul both our asses into jail.”

“You lied to the police for him,” Sam was closer now, “Shit, Tara, I know you carry a torch for the guy, but,” she could hear him scowl. “I don’t get it, I really don’t.”

“And you don’t have to,” she said quietly, looking at him for the first time. He narrowed his eyes at her, then shook his head angrily and turned away. 

The microwave beeped. Tara looked up to check on Sookie. She was at the other side of the bar. Far enough away to be safely shielded from Tara’s thoughts. Tara turned back to the microwave then did a double take. Sookie’s mouth was hanging open.

Shit.

Sookie finished giving her customers their food then walked briskly over to Tara and grabbed her collar.

“Sook,” Tara protested, but allowed herself to be dragged into the employee bathroom.

“I know, I know, sleeping with Sam was a mistake.” Tara said sullenly. It really had been, actually, now that she thought about it. Sam might’ve distracted Sookie from the vampire.

Sookie froze, then wheeled on her with a mock smile. “So weird, right?  _ You gave the police a fake alibi for Jason! _ ”

Tara winced. “They didn’t mirandize him, Sook! They took advantage of him! He wouldn’t even know that he had a right to an attorney -”

_ “So you faked an alibi?” _

Tara scowled. “I just saved your brother, and this is how you treat me?”

“I never wanted this!” Sookie practically shrieked. Tara was worried that people would hear her. “Why would I want you to perjure yourself to  _ temporarily  _ help Jason?”

“It’s not perjury,” Tara replied weakly, “Not unless they brought me to court. Obstruction of justice, maybe -”

“Gah!” Both of Sookie’s hands glowed orange in her frustration. 

Tara got defensive. “You and I both know there’s more to Jason than meets the eye!” Tara burst with emotion, “Deep down he is a very good person.”

Sookie blinked. Her shock was enough to douse her hands. “No he’s not, Tara,” she said incredulously, “He is selfish, egotistical, and a complete horn-dog, and he’s never going to care for you the way you care for him!”

That was going too far. “Y-you don’t know that!” Sooke just didn’t have enough faith in her brother. Maybe this whole business with Dawn had shaken him, or maybe he would change his mind later. One day he would be ready for a real woman, who -

_ “Christ, Tara!”  _ Sookie sounded disgusted. Tara would’ve snapped back but Sookie threw up her hands and blew right past her back into the restaurant. For a brief second Tara was stunned.

“Good luck with your shields while you’re spending all of your mental energy judging me!” she called down the hallway, but she was gone already.

Lafayette stuck his head out the kitchen door. “Hooker, what?”

“Shut up,” she snapped before slamming the bathroom door in frustration. She needed a minute.

She glared at her reflection in the mirror, full of doubt and self hate.

It would have been fine if Sookie hadn’t found out about it.

A memory came, unbidden. Her mother splayed over the coffee table, reeking of her own sick. Her mother was ashamed. She wanted Tara to go away, to keep her shame hidden. So much that when Tara tried to help her up she was attacked by a half-empty liquor bottle.

Tara looked at her forehead in the mirror. The incident had happened weeks ago and the mark was almost completely gone now.

This was different, Tara decided. Her love for Jason was pure. She only wanted to hide what she did because she knew Sookie would overreact. The police would move on from Jason now and find the real killer, who was probably the vampire. Then, maybe, Jason would reflect on Tara and realize that she was what he had been looking for all along.

* * *

Sookie took the warmed True Blood from the microwave and a cocktail napkin from the bar and walked them briskly to Bill. He looked up as she put them down and the slight twinkle in his eyes was her only clue that he was happy to see her.

She took his arm and murmured, “Come on.”

He grabbed his True Blood as she led him away from the table. “Where are we going?”

To the parking lot. Where she had been attacked by the Rattrays. Where they could speak without being heard. 

She turned and looked him in the eye. “I need your help,” she said in earnest, “I need to go to Shreveport.”


	8. The Vampire Bar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sookie goes to a bar.

“Shreveport?” Bill asked, bemused.

Sookie nodded fiercely. “Did you hear about Dawn?”

He frowned. He looked confused. Sookie would’ve denied it, but she felt just a little bit better.

“Dawn was another waitress here,” she explained quietly, “Someone killed her last night.”

He raised an eyebrow. “How?”

Seriously?

“Say you’re sorry,” Sookie snapped. She was really feeling the effects of the day.

He looked at her askance. “Excuse me?” 

Sookie scowled. “You wanna learn to fit in with people? You gotta say you’re sorry. You don’t even have to mean it - lord knows they don’t most of the time.”

He regarded her without expression. “I  _ am  _ sorry for anything that causes you pain, dear, but I was under the impression that your circle of friends was...small.”

Sookie blinked. “Oh.” She wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Disconcerted that he couldn’t intuit that she might still grieve someone she worked close to almost every day? Or touched that he had been paying attention? Apparently she was simple enough to lean more towards the latter.

She shook the intrusive thoughts from her head. “I’m the one that found her.” He listened patiently. “She had bite marks on her. Just like Maudette.”

“How was she killed?” he asked again.

“Strangulation.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “Not a vampire then,” he seemed certain. “They would have been drained instead of strangled. No point in wasting blood like that.”

Her eyes flashed. “No point, huh.” She didn’t wait for a response. “The cops think it was my brother.”

“Was it?”

She took a few deep breaths. She reminded herself that accusing someone of murder was probably not such a big deal to a vampire. And that Jason had been a grade A buttwipe when they had met. “Jason wouldn’t do that.”

He almost looked at her sympathetically. Almost. “I’ve been around long enough to know just about anyone is capable of just about anything.” He sounded like they were having an academic disagreement. 

“I would know,” she deadpanned in contradiction. 

Bill nodded, thoughtful again. 

“I’ve been listening in,” she continued, “and there’s a vampire bar where Dawn used to hang out in Shreveport. Have you heard of it?”

He nodded slowly, his eyes were opache. “Fangtasia.”

“Fang...tasia?” she repeated in disbelief. 

“You have to remember that most vampires are very old. Puns used to be the highest form of humor.”

Sookie opened her mouth to respond to that and thought better. “Anyway, I was thinking if I went there, I could do some sniffing around. You think maybe you could take me?”

Bill went very still for a moment. “I would’ve thought you would be wary of meeting more vampires.”

Sookie watched his face carefully. “I am, that’s why I’m asking you to take me.”

“What about the vampire bar in Monroe, Bloody Mary?”

Sookie raised an eyebrow. Huh? “That’s significantly father away. I doubt Dawn or Maudette would’ve gone there for a night out.” 

Bill shook his head. “It’s a bad idea to go to a vampire bar and start accusing people of murder.”

“I wasn’t going to accuse people,” she said indignantly, “I just want to see if anyone saw them.”

Bill stepped closer to her and rubbed her shoulder. She wanted to lean in closer for a hug. “Darling, vampires are very secretive. Even if one of them did know something they wouldn’t share it with just anyone. Not without a price.”

She shivered when she thought of the price they might demand. 

For a moment she allowed herself to be comforted by his touch, then something occurred to her. “Why would it be worse in Shreveport than in Monroe?” she asked curiously.

He hesitated. “There are different vampires in Shreveport,” he said lamely. She waited for more and was disappointed.

She sighed and stepped back. “Look, this is the only way forward I can think of. If you don’t want to help, I’ll just go on my own.” Her blood ran cold when she said that. 

He sighed, “Don’t be ridiculous,” he murmured, but before she could retort he asked, “When is your next night off?”

Days later, when she greeted him in the living room he stared at her outfit, stunned. 

“Is it alright?” Sookie asked nervously.

“...Yes,” he said finally, but that wasn’t reflected in his face. He seemed angry. 

Maybe Gran had been right, when she had asked “Aren’t you going to be a little cold in that dress?” and had thought,  _ Isn’t that too revealing?  _ Gran was a bit old fashioned, but she supposed so was Bill...and possibly his vampire friends. It was a white sundress with vivid red flowers, low cut and sleeveless, which accentuated her bosom and made her tan glow. She was worried now.

Apparently their views didn’t line up completely, because Gran had heard his hesitation and was abruptly angry on Sookie’s behalf. “Anyone with half a brain in his head has got to admit that Sookie is one of the prettiest girls around,” she said irritably from the couch.

“Oh yes, of course,” he agreed, but there was no inflection in his voice.

Sookie suppressed a sigh. “Shall we go then?”

He nodded and stood. “Goodbye, Mrs. Stackhouse. It was a pleasure seeing you again.”

Gran was mollified. “Have a good time!”

The tension in the car was palpable. 

“I’m sorry for not dressing correctly,” she muttered.

He coldly responded, “Who said that?” 

“You’re treating me as though I’ve done something wrong,” she tried not to snap. He was doing her a favor, afterall.

“No,” he sighed, “I’m just doubting my ability to return you unscathed to your grandmother without having to kill someone.”

Sookie looked at him, questioningly.

“You look like vampire bait,” he explained, looking her up and down dubiously.

She had heard that term before. “What’s that’s supposed to mean,” she asked. She ran through some possibilities in her head. “Is it the red?”

He shook his head and stayed silent.

Sookie could tell right away that she didn’t fit in here.

She started to get nervous outside. The building buzzed ominously, full of compact thoughts and energetic bodies all swept up in a bizarre high encouraged by the thumping music. A drunk man bumped into her, his bare arm touching her own and she rued her decision to go sleeveless as she found her feet again.

There wasn’t a long line to get in, but vampires had the privilege of cutting to the front regardless. She was carded at the door by an attractive but stoic vampire who must’ve been a teenager when she was turned. The vampire seemed entirely unfazed by all of the other patrons, but she gave Sookie a long curious look.

“Carded at a vampire bar! Who’d have thought!” Sookie joked nervously.

“I can no longer tell human ages,” she said in a quiet voice that made her sound possessed, “And we must be careful not to serve minors. In any capacity.” She scrutinized Sookie harder.

Sookie smiled her broad, crazy smile and took her ID back. What was so fascinating about her? 

She thought she understood almost immediately upon entering the bar. Almost everyone here was dressed in black, and the others were hardly in their Sunday best. Furthermore, everyone else seemed to be dressed to meet some kind of fantasy or fetish. A few wore capes. Some had fake blood dribbling from the corner of their mouths. There were an outrageous number of corsets and leather pants, and a few wore period clothing, but the cheap kind that one might find at a halloween store. 

She fidgeted with her dress self consciously.

Bill leaned down to murmur in her ear. “You look like a candle in a coal mine.” She couldn’t tell from his tone if found that amusing, endearing, or unfortunate. Probably all three.

The walls were bright red, as were the booths. There was plenty of space to dance in the middle, as many were doing, but some of the floor space was taken up by a small stage equipped with a stripper pole which was being used. Sookie blushed and averted her eyes, then noticed that while they were largely being ignored by the humans, they had caught the attention of several vampires. Some seemed fascinated by her, but she noted that others were more interested in Bill. As they passed by one, Sookie heard him take a strong whiff. Another, a tall blond in a dominatrix outfit, narrowed her eyes and left a man who was mid sentence to approach.

“Bill,” she greeted in a lazy drawl, “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

Bill looked a little uncomfortable to Sookie, but he answered smoothly. “I’ve been mainstreaming.”

The blond seemed entirely nonplussed. “Good for you,” she eyed Sookie curiously, “Who’s the doll?”

“Pam, this is Sookie. Sookie, this is Pam.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Sookie grinned broadly and held out a hand to shake. Pam eyed it skeptically. Sookie glanced at Bill who looked embarrassed. 

“Charmed, I’m sure.” Pam eyed her and Bill again. “Well have fun.” She turned away, but walked past the man from earlier who seemed to be awaiting her return. Sookie tracked her void, somehow different than Bills, going into the back rooms. She had no idea what to make of the exchange. She felt like she was missing something.

Bill led her in a different direction as she looked around at the other voids. There were so many of them, and they were sprinkled in amongst the humans almost evenly. The vampires, oddly enough, were likewise dressed up in costumes. She could easily spot the glow of the vampires in the dim lighting of the bar (not to mention their voids which were very prominent against the buzz of the hivemind enthusiasm), and that something extra that Bill sometimes exuded was particularly potent here. They were sprinkled in amongst the humans discreetly, very few were grouped together. But had she not had her extra sense, she thought the vampires might be indistinguishable from the humans. Their costumes were just as variable, some particularly gaudy and some selected with real effort and attention. 

Two vampires at the bar eyed her as she walked in. One had plastic fangs, for whatever reason. “This is kind of like if a vampire bar were a ride at Disney World,” Sookie giggled nervously.

That seemed to anger Bill. “Do not let your guard down,” he all but snapped, “They may put on a show, but they’re entirely authentic.”

“Okay, okay, sheesh,” she murmured back. Bill was very tightly wound around his own kind. 

Actually, she realized that there was a flaw in her thinking. Aesthetically the vampires and the humans were very similar, but none of the humans looked bored. The vampires, however, all seemed uninterested with the events of the bar. One was engaging an enthusiastic human tourist group, but with a slightly far off look. There was a bartender distributing drinks busily and a little too quickly, to the amusement of his patrons, but seemed to be doing his task in a daze. Others were standing around as if stationed, maybe waiting to be approached by eager humans.

She was intimidated, but also fascinated. She had barely seen one goth in her entire life, and now she was surrounded. And unfortunately, she realized that she was too shielded to get the most of her experience. She tried relaxing her shields, just a bit.

The force of the thoughts hit her like a wrecking ball.

_ I could just rip the tape off those tits. _

_ I thought she would like this... _

_ I wonder if he’ll come out tonight? _

She grounded herself and held her own against the tempest. Gritting her teeth, she focused on the feeling of the dress on her skin, then when that didn’t work, the discomfort of her red stilettos. The loud electronica music was not helping her focus. She lifted her hands to rub her temples, but before they reached Bill had lightly taken them in his own. For a brief moment she let his void envelope her and sooth her nerves.

Then, nerves soothed, she pulled away. 

“Thank you,” she remembered her manners, “but I can’t hear as well when you do that.”

He frowned. “Don’t say things like that. Not here.”

Before she could ponder his words he put his arm around her waist, careful to avoid the skin of her arms, and gently led her further in.

“Can I get you a drink,” Bill murmured close to her ear.

“Please,” she smiled. She let him lead her to the bar, as she kept her mind open and searching. He ordered himself a bottle of O negative and she ordered a gin and tonic.

“Long time no see, Bill,” the bartender greeted amicably. He was Native American, had long black hair, and was built like a tank. He was wearing leather pants, a vest, and nothing else. “How’s it going?.”

“Very well thanks,” Bill accepted his drink and nodded politely.

“I’ll say it is,” the bartender looked at Sookie curiously, “This your meal for tonight?”

Sookie coughed on the little sip she had taken and pulled her shields back up.

“This is my friend Sookie. Sookie, Long Shadow.” 

“Nice to meet you,” Sookie said politely. Long Shadow didn’t respond. “I have some questions to ask.”

Bill stiffened slightly. He must’ve known this was coming, though.

“Anything, beautiful woman,” Long Shadow smiled at her. She returned the smile nervously.

“Have you seen either of these women?” She took out the newspaper photos of Maudette and Dawn.

“I’ve seen them both here,” he nodded.

“Great! Thank you!” Score! “And do you remember who they hung around with?”

His face closed down. “That’s something I wouldn’t know. We don’t notice that here. You won’t either.”

She had broken a bar rule. Bill’s grip on her tightened just a little. “Thank you, I appreciate your taking the time,” she replied gently.

Perhaps he was just not used to polite southern belles, but after looking at her face consideringly he looked back down at the pictures. “That one,” he pointed to the picture of Maudette, “She wanted to die.”

Sookie’s eyes widened. “How do you know?”

“Everyone who comes here does, to one extent or another.” He looked into her eyes searchingly. “That’s what we are. Death.”

Before Sookie could respond, Bill paid for their drinks and led her away. He led her to a high table in silence, giving Sookie room to think about what Long Shadow had meant. She wondered if he gave that bit to all the young women who looked out of place. She wondered if it was a warning or an accusation.

_ One such as you should be wary of dead things. _

“Do you suppose I want to die, since I came here with you?” she asked Bill conversationally. 

“I think you want to find out why other people are dying,” he took a sip of his blood. She couldn’t tell if he was being entirely truthful.

She lowered her shields again and scanned the thoughts of the patrons of the bar, not expecting to find anything useful. She did not, but the thrill of the new was still exciting. Stuck in place, without having to worry about her own body functions, she found that she could just observe the flow of the ocean of minds without being completely swept away by it. She narrowed her focus experimentally to the humans she found in casual clothing. They were mostly palling around with friends who were enthusiasts, or tourists who thought they would try the place out but hadn’t thought through the aesthetic. She found the one bored human in the bar, a plainly dressed girl in the corner who was indulging her girlfriend by coming here. 

Even these outliers were influenced by the emotions of the group. Lust, not always sexual, seized the patrons and intoxicated them. Some just got carried away with it, drinking until they lost their senses or grinding up to a partner on the dance floor with abandon. One man in particular was running on a high of sexual liberation having found a place where queerness was easily accepted. Others intellectualized it, such as one woman who was evaluating the vampires trying to understand how they fit into the landscape historically. A lot of people were desperate for something, a hit of a drug or a vampire bite. This was a place of hedonism, some of it was joyous and some was not. 

Still, fascinating though this was, none of it was useful. No one was thinking of Dawn or Maudette, no one was thinking of murder, and no one was planning another one. She considered going down and passing around her photos. Would anyone stop to listen to her questions?

In the midst of this madness, she was distracted by a void that was coming closer. There was something particular about this one, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on why. It was like it was denser, in some ways. And for some reason it really reminded her of the beach.

Abruptly the human thoughts shifted to a new vampire in the room.

_ It ain’t gay if it’s a vampire, right? _

_...so much bigger… _

_ I wonder if he’ll remember me? _

_ Okay, I can do this.  _ The intentionality of the thought surprised her and she lingered.  _ Oh my god, he’s so powerful, he’s so beautiful. Just walk up to him and offer yourself completely. _

“You’re being scanned,” Bill grumbled.

“Huh?”

He shook his head. “Hopefully it won’t matter. Unless we’re summoned.”

Sookie tried to look around with her eyes discreetly, and almost immediately found the void in question, except now it was a tall, glowing man sitting on a throne staring at her from the other side of the room. He was very large, dressed more casually than any other vampire in the bar, with long blond hair worn loose and blue eyes she could see from across the room because of their brightness. Also because they made eye contact.

Sookie only barely remembered Dawn’s description of the vampire she had slept with. It felt like she had spied on those thoughts eons ago, but...it wasn’t unreasonable to assume that this was the one, right? 

There was a man kowtowing at the vampire’s feet.

_...please, please, I know I’m not worthy, but just a look, please… _

He then made the mistake of touching the vampire’s knee.

The vampire’s eyes snapped away and before Sookie realized what was happening the man had flown halfway across the room. His thoughts were incoherent with shock, but there was a sharp pain on his forehead. He realized he was bleeding.

Sookie rubbed her own forehead and winced sympathetically. 

Few of the humans at the bar noticed the scene. Few noticed how the vampires completely stilled or that several had extended their fangs. Before anyone could act, including Sookie, one of the vampires on staff approached. 

Sookie watched through his eyes. The vampire in question was young and alluring and clearly seducing him. “Hi,” she cooed, her fangs extended, her eyes hungry. “I’m Taryn.”

Sookie had a gross suspicion and looked at the scene through her own eyes.

Sure enough it was the teenage bouncer. Perhaps the distance changed her perspective on the scene, but Taryn didn’t look anywhere near as provocative from Sookie’s perspective. Her shirt was not as low cut, her breasts not as perky, and when she pulled his arm to help him to his feet, her hand didn’t curl invitingly. She did gaze at his head wound hungrily, though. Then Sookie saw a vulgar fantasy from the man and had to rub her temples as if that would help her scrub it away. She knew Taryn wasn’t an actual teenager, but it still felt wrong.

She looked up and the vampire was on his phone.

“Who’s he?” Sookie asked Bill quietly. She wondered if the vampire could hear her anyway.

Bill sighed as if with some long suffering annoyance. “That’s Eric. He owns the bar.”

Sookie raised an eyebrow. “And so he just kicks his customers whenever he’s annoyed with them?”

Bill shrugged. “They like it.”

Sookie wanted to rebuke him, but she couldn’t authoritatively. The man hadn’t  _ disliked  _ it anyway. “So how old is this Eric.”

“Very. He’s the oldest thing in the bar,” he seemed disgruntled. 

“He’s mean,” Sookie decided.

“We’re all mean, Sookie,” Bill was giving her an odd look over his True Blood. “We’re all very strong and very violent.”

“Not you,” she murmured. His face closed off and she resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “You want to ‘mainstream.’ You won’t do anything too bad.”

“Just when I think you’re too naive to walk around alone, you say something shrewd,” he said with a short laugh. She bristled. “Uh-oh.”

“Don’t say uh-oh. Vampires don’t say uh-oh.” Bill was looking down at the table, but Sookie looked around to try to find what had bothered him. The only thing she noticed was that ‘Eric,’ who was back to staring at her, had now been joined by the vampire Pam. She too was looking in their direction.

“He’s going to summon us,” Bill explained.

“He can do that?” Sookie asked dubiously.

“Oh yeah.”

Sookie thought for a moment. “He outranks you,” she guessed.

Bill didn’t look her in the eye. “He owns the bar.”

“Would it be alright if I came with you?” Sookie asked. 

Bill gave her a look she couldn’t scrutinize.

Before he had a chance to respond, the big blond lifted his hand and twitched two fingers. Bill was summoned. “Come on,” he whispered in her ear, “Let’s get this over with.”

Oh. She was summoned too. 

Before she could ponder the implications of that, Bill took her hand and gently led her around the table and across the dance floor. It was like someone muffled the minds of the bar with a pillow. When they were still making their way over he sacrificed her hand in favor of having a firm grip on her elbow. Too soon Bill tugged her to a halt yards away and they were in front of the vampire in question. Bill nodded his head deeply enough to be considered a bow. The vampire on the throne seemed to take the gesture in stride, keeping his eyes on Sookie. He gave her a thorough once over.

“Eric,” Bill said stiffly.

Eric’s face became bored and evaluative as he turned to Bill. Pam’s expression was almost identical.

“Bill Compton,” Eric greeted lazily. “It has been a while.”

Sookie tried really hard not to fidget with her skirt.

“Yes, well,” Bill gripped her elbow a little harder, “I’ve been-”

“Mainstreaming,” Eric cut him off. There was no mistaking the condescension that dripped from every syllable of the word. “I heard.” 

Pam looked smug. It was like they were making fun of him. Sookie didn’t care for that at all.

Eric turned his attention back to Sookie. “I see that is going well for you.” His face was blank.

Bill looked uncomfortable. “Yes, forgive me, this is-”

“Sookie Stackhouse,” she blurted, then suppressed her wince. She was a nervous talker.

“Well aren’t you sweet,” Eric purred.

“Not really,” she replied thinking of her blood, then she realized her mistake. Why was she so jumpy?

Eric’s expression changed to one of surprise for a moment before he burst into laughter. Sookie was a little startled. She had gotten the impression that all vampires were stoic all the time. 

“Sookie, I’m Eric,” he smiled loftily, “And I hear you’ve been asking my bartender some questions.”

Bill froze. 

The fact that her questions were significant enough to be reported to the owner of the bar (which seemed like a much more distinctive title in Fangtasia than in Merlotte’s) was a bit disquieting. No matter, she was a woman on a mission. She fished the pictures of Maudette and Dawn out and had to lean over to hand them to him - Bill was trying to cut off her circulation.

“Have you seen either of these women in the bar?”

Pam watched her outstretched arm a little like Tina watched birds. Eric didn’t seem to mind though, and he took the pictures with bored interest.

“I have tasted this one,” he held up Dawn’s picture. “She liked pain.”

Sookie nodded. 

Pam turned to look at him with a frown, which was roughly the vampire equivalent of gasping with her mouth hanging open (for everyone other than Eric, anyway), but apparently she was obligated to look at the photos too since he had first. 

She looked over his shoulder. “I have seen them both, but I didn’t partake. This one,” she leaned over Eric to point to Maudette’s picture, “was a truly pathetic creature.”

Sookie nodded and took the photos back. Dawn liked pain, Maudette was pathetic, and she knew one vampire who had slept with Dawn at least. It was less than she wanted, but it was something. 

“Friends of yours?” Pam was eyeing her with renewed, cynical interest.

Sookie smiled very brightly. “Acquaintances.”

“Friendly enough that you’re willing to play Nancy Drew,” she sneered.

Sookie’s smile got brighter, but didn’t answer. She swore Bill was going to do permanent damage to her arm. 

“Thank you very much for your time.” Sookie wanted to run as fast as she could, but Bill kept her in place.

“Bill, are you quite attached to your friend,” Eric asked suddenly.

It took Sookie a moment to realize that he was asking if she could be borrowed.

“She is mine,” Bill said quietly, but firmly. 

Eric sighed. “What a shame...for both of us,” he gave her a sly smile. Sookie wasn’t sure exactly what he meant by that, but it pissed her off. Bill stiffened, but he didn’t respond. Instead he bowed a little more deeply and backed away slowly. Eric watched Sookie as if she were a juicy steak as they left.

When they were far enough away Sookie yanked her arm out of his grasp. She was pretty sure she would have bruises. “What was that about?”

Bill was reluctant to answer. “He’s older than me by centuries.”

Sookie rubbed her arm. “Is that the pecking order? By age?”

“Pecking order,” Bill repeated thoughtfully. “That’s not a bad way to put it.”

She sighed. He hadn’t really answered her question.

Bill led her back to their table and went to get them refills. Almost as soon as he left she felt an annoying prodding on her brain, like fingers searching for purchase. It was a bit like when Bill had tried to glamour her, and equally as chill inducing. With a shudder she turned to the offending source. Eric, now without Pam, was staring at her, apparently trying to count her eyelashes. When their eyes met he smirked expectantly.

Sookie turned away and tried to control her panic.

“He’s going to know I’m not normal,” she reported to Bill when he returned. She wondered what he would do when she didn’t obey as she should.

Bill frowned in confusion, then noticed Eric’s attention and went completely still.

“He’s seriously breaking protocol by trying to compel you when I’ve told him you’re mine,” he snarled. 

Sookie rolled her eyes. “You seem to be telling everyone that.”

“It’s vampire tradition,” Bill said by way of explanation, “If I pronounce you as mine, no one else can try to feed on you.”

“Feed on me...” Delightful. She took a bitter sip of her drink. She reminded herself that all of this was her choice. 

Bill looked exasperated for all of a second. 

“I’m protecting you.”

Not terribly effectively though, if Eric could do whatever it was he was trying to do consequence free. “Has it occurred to you that I-” She stopped. She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. She counted to ten. When she looked at him again, Bill’s eyes were boring into hers.

“That you don’t need protection?” he suggested quietly.

“That I might want a say in how I’m protected. That perhaps we could discuss it.”

Bill scowled.

She snuck a glance at Eric. He looked puzzled.

Sookie was going to suggest they leave. She hadn’t gotten much to help Tara or Jason or even Bill, for that matter, but it was getting more dangerous to stay. Perhaps if it looked like Bill was dragging her out kicking and screaming it would save a conversation with Eric (though she had no way of knowing what exactly he expected her to do). Then she felt a particularly tense thought. She turned away from Bill and scanned the crowd, looking for the source.

_...backup was supposed to be here fifteen minutes ago… _

“Bill we need to get out of here,” she said softly.

The intensity of her voice alarmed him. She grabbed his hand (he winced, apparently she wasn’t supposed to initiate the contact in public) and dragged him. She paused halfway through the room. Eric’s attention was still on her, and it would look suspicious if they left abruptly before the action started. Bill might get in trouble. Besides, it would be wrong not to give Eric a heads up.

Eric had just tried to kidnap her, probably. She debated how much she cared about behaving unethically towards him.

With a very unlady like sound, she directed them back to the throne.

Bill tried to pull her before she got too close, but she grabbed her hand away. Eric lifted his eyebrow. 

“There’s going to be a raid,” Sookie announced.

Pam blurred back to Eric’s side in an instant.

Eric’s face lost all traces of humor. “Tell me you’re not an undercover cop.”

“No, but the guy with the hat on the dance floor is.”

Pam’s head snapped up, looking for the target.

Eric leaned back. “Doesn’t matter, we do nothing illegal here.”

Sookie shook her head. “He saw Taryn take the man from earlier to the bathroom. When his backup arrives...” she felt an approaching wave of intention and aggression from outside, “...soon, they’ll find that she’s been feeding on him.”

“How do you know this,” Pam demanded.

“Time to go,” Bill grabbed her shoulders, her free will be damned.

But he was right, there was a loud bang in the front. Someone had kicked a door down. Heads were starting to turn in confusion.

“Eric,” Pam whined.

“Back door,” he said swiftly. 

Eric and Pam blurred away. Bill swept Sookie in his arms and followed them. Outside they went in separate directions, but as he left Eric turned to them and said “It was wonderful meeting you Miss Stackhouse. You will come again.”

It wasn’t a question, and as Bill deposited her in his car she felt genuinely angry, but despite herself Sookie was more interested in how while he was running away, Eric had still managed to make his voice sound like pure honey.

It wasn’t until they were a great distance away that Sookie realized how on edge she was. She had a ringing in her head that was like mental tinnitus. Everything was setting her off, from the kinetic energy rolling the car into the night, to the electrical buzz sending a song through the car stereo, to the sonic waves of the song itself, which was...wait…

“What language is this?” Sookie asked dizzily.

Bill barely took his eyes off the road to look at her. “Cambodian. Why?”

Her brain was trying to decipher the strange sounds, to oddly mixed success. Odd because she didn’t know Cambodian herself. 

Which meant that she must be borrowing from Bill’s mind. Which wasn’t possible.

“Can you pull over, please,” she asked insistently. “I just...I need things to stop.”

Bill looked surprised, but nodded and immediately pulled the car over to a shoulder in the road. He turned off the engine and with it the music. The tinnitus in her head went away instantly. It only made her slightly less anxious.

“I just need a couple minutes of quiet, then we can go,” she said apologetically.

Bill almost smiled. “Well, I’m in no hurry. You take your time.”

Sookie nodded and concentrated on her breathing. When she focused on Bill’s mind she was met with a familiar void and nothing else. A familiar void with a slight taste of something she couldn’t place. Maybe she was just imagining things. It was so hard to tell sometimes.

She shook her head. “Why did he leave?” she asked, suddenly curious. “Eric, I mean. If he owns the bar, he’s still gonna be in trouble even if he wasn’t there, right?” Had she missed something obvious?

Bill sighed quietly. “Eric’s been doing this for a while. I’m sure he has his reasons. Or maybe he doesn’t.”

Sookie peered at him. “You don’t find it a little odd?”

“I don’t waste my time worrying about Eric Northman’s well being,” he said shortly. That made her even more curious about Eric Northman, specifically about his history with Bill. She didn’t ask, mostly because he probably wouldn’t answer if she did.

“I’m sorry if I’ve gotten you into any trouble tonight.”

From the corner of her eye she could see Bill turn to her. “Don’t apologize.”

She wanted to apologize more.

Bill put his hand on her cheek and gently turned her face to his. His smile was reassuring and almost as comforting as his touch. “We vampires are always in some kind of trouble. I prefer to be in it with you.”

His thumb moved to her lips. She remembered their kiss from before. He leaned in just as she did. She didn’t even have to remind herself not to think this time. Their lips met tenderly at first, but quickly became more frenzied. She felt like he might be as hungry for her touch as she was for his. She pulled his head closer. He grabbed at her waist. She nipped at his lower lip. He made a noise in the back of his throat.

A police siren went off directly behind him.

“Oh no.” 

She jumped and pushed him back, detangling herself with an urgency he clearly didn’t match. She tugged her dress down unnecessarily. 

“Just let me do the talking,” she murmured quickly.

He was expressionless. 

The officer appeared in his window and knocked. “Open up.”

Bill complied.

The officer lowered his head to get a better look in the car. He was a portly man in his forties with an annoyingly confident smirk.

_ Perverts. _

“Evening, miss. What are you two doing out this late.”

Sookie smiled her bright smile. “Driving home from a date.”

The officer nodded,  _ Date, huh,  _ “We were raiding a bar not too far from here. Y’all coming from there by any chance?”

Sookie shook her head. “No sir, not us.”

She’s  _ all talk but her man’s not making a peep.  _ “It’s called Fangtasia. That ring any bells?”

Sookie shook her head with her smile, but the officer had already moved on to Bill.

“How about you, son? You seem awful quiet. Don’t you talk?”

He shined his flashlight in Bill’s face to be purposefully obnoxious.

“I’m a man of few words,” Bill answered dryly. 

The officer chuckled. “A man of few words. I like that.”  _..my responsibility...  _ “Let me shine this light here on your neck, miss, if you don’t mind.”

She didn’t. This officer had no right to see if she had bite marks (it was illegal for vampires to publically feed, but even if she had been fed on at Fangtasia the officer would have had a hard time proving it), but she was fine letting this man have his little power trip.

Bill wasn’t. His face, as he turned from the officer to watch Sookie was enraged. His fangs extended.

Sookie watched him carefully as she brushed her hair behind her shoulder and tilted her head for the officer. As long as the officer didn’t see, didn’t realize what Bill was, it was fine. 

_ Look at how pretty that is…  _ the officer thought.

Bill couldn’t hear his thoughts. “Why don’t you ask her if you can shine it between her legs?”

The officer recoiled. “Excuse me?”

“Bill!”

But Bill turned his head to the man who jumped back when he saw the protrusions and grabbed his gun. From the man’s mind she could see that Bill was nonplussed.

“I like your gun,” Bill said, “It’s a beautiful weapon.”

Then something odd happened. One minute the officer was looking into Bill’s dark, inscrutable eyes, finger on the trigger. Then he had a feeling, like his mind was being enveloped. Like his brain was being held by a cool hand and long, pale fingers were stroking its folds.

“Thank you,” he sighed. It surprised the man. He hadn’t meant to speak.

“May I have it?” Bill asked lazily.

The man wanted to say no, but he couldn’t reach his mouth. His no’s belonged to the vampire now. He tried to pull the trigger. “Sure, I guess,” he said instead as he handed over his last defense.

“Bill,” Sookie spat, “I want you to stop this, right now.”

He didn’t. He took the gun and looked it over. “It’s heavier than I imagined. Is it loaded?”

“Bill!”

“Well, yes. Yes it is.” The discordance in his head was like listening to nails on a chalkboard. He wanted to flail, to encase his brain back in his own head, but it was no longer  _ his  _ head. It was just a body.

And yet, when the vampire pointed his own gun at him, he wet himself.

“Now, you listen to me, officer,” Bill’s cool voice didn’t calm the man as it had calmed Sookie before, “I do not take kindly to you shining your light in the eyes of my female companion. And as I have more than one hundred years on you, I do not take kindly to you calling me ‘son.’” Bill leaned over and gently pushed the nozzle of the gun into the man’s head. “So the next time you pull somebody over on suspicion of being a vampire, you better pray to God that you’re wrong. Because that vampire may not be as kind to you as I’m about to be.”

Sookie was shaking.

Bill leaned back. “Now, I’m not gonna kill you, but I am gonna keep your gun.” He leaned forward to look into the officers eyes. “Does that sound fair?”

“Yes.”  _ No...yes...no...yes… _

“Yes what?” Bill prodded.

“Yes, sir,” the body that wasn’t his said.

Bill nodded. “Now, you keep this incident to yourself,” he said firmly, “In fact, you’ll just remember how this felt, the lessons you learned, but you won’t remember why you learnt them. Say ‘yes sir.’”

The man complied.

Bill leaned back and started the engine. “You have a nice night.”

The Cambodian singers started up again. He looked at Sookie as he pulled away, but she couldn’t read his expression. As the mental tinnitus started back up again, for a brief moment, she genuinely worried about not knowing what he was thinking.


End file.
